
Class _X 



\ 1^ 0- i- 



Book 



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Copyright N^JAil 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

The Apple of Eden 

Mirage 

The City of Beautiful Nonsense 



THE 
PATCHWORK PAPERS 

/ BY 

E/TEMPLE THURSTON 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1910 






Some eight of these papers appear in 
print for the first time. For those 
which have been published before, my 
thanks are due to the Editors of " The 
Onlooker'^ and ''The Ladies' Field" 
for permission to reprint. 

THE A UTHOR. 



Copyright, 19 io, by 
E. Temple Thurston 

Published February 1 9 1 1 



^CI.A278326 



is 



f 



To 
NORMAN FORBES ROBERTSON 



My Dear Norman, 

Here are my Patchwork Papers for 
you to unpick at your leisure. I have 
not presumed to call them essays, since 
it is nowadays unseemly for a novelist 
to attempt anything worthy of the name 
of letters — moreover, would any one 
read them ? By the same token, I have 
not dared to call them short stories, and 
that, mainly because the so-called essen- 
tial love interest is conspicuous by its 
absence. Really they are illustrated 
essays. What better name then than 
papers can be given them? 

It may, for example, be pardonable in 
a paper to split an infinitive for the sake 
of euphony, as I have done in "From 
my Portfolio," — but to split an in- 
finitive in an essay! It were better to 
rob a church, or speak out one's mind 
about the monarchy. All such things 
vli 



PREFACE 

as these are treasonable. To call them 
papers then will save me much from my 
friends. 

When they appeared serially, it was 
under the title "Beauties which are 
Inevitable." I altered that when I 
thought of you trying to remember what 
the book was called, as you recom- 
mended it with a twinkle in your eye to 
your friends. But that title still stands 
justified in my mind, since these papers 
express the things which latterly have 
become realities to me. For whereso- 
ever you may go in this world — whether 
it be striving to the highest heights, or 
descending, as some would have it, to 
the deepest depths — life is just as ugly 
or just as beautiful as you are inclined 
to find it. 

In all my early work, until, in fact, 
I wrote "Sally Bishop," I was inclined 
to find it ugly enough in all conscience. 
But now beauty does seem inevitable 
and, what is more, the only reality we 
viii 



PREFACE 

have. For if, as they say, God made 
man in His own image, then to call the 
ugliness of man a reality is to curse the 
sight of God; in which case, it were as 
well to die and have done with this busi- 
ness of existence altogether. 

To see nothing but ugliness then, or, 
as the modern school would have it, to 
see nothing but realism, is a form of 
mental suicide which, thank God, no 
longer appeals to me. For when every 
year I find the daffodils bringing up 
their glory of colour and beauty of line 
with unfailing perfection, I cannot but 
think that man, made in God's image, 
was meant to be still more beautiful in 
his thoughts and deeds even than they. 
Then surely what man was meant to be 
must be the only true reality of what 
he is. All else happens to him. That 
is all. 

Wherefore, when, in these pages, you 
read of Bellwattle and of Emily the 
housemaid, of my little old pensioner, 
ix 



PREFACE 

or of the poor woman in Limehouse; 
when, too, you read my attempt to give 
words to the maternal instinct ; then you 
will see realities as I have seen them 
over the past two years and I dedicate 
this true record of them to you, because 
I know that you will take them to be as 
real as the beauty of Livy, the manli- 
ness of Nod, or the colour of those wall- 
flowers which bloom by the little red- 
brick paths in that graceful garden of 
yours in Kent. 

Yours always, 
E. Temple Thurston. 



Eversley, 1910. 



CONTENTS 



I. 


The Pension of 


the 






Patchwork Quilt 


3 


XL 


The Mouse-trap, Henri- 






etta Street 




13 


III. 


The Wonderful City 


25 


IV. 


Bellwattle and 


the 






Laws of God 




33 


V. 


Realism 




43 


VI. 


The Sabbath 




55 


VII. 


House to Let 




67 


/III. 


A Suffragette 




77 


IX. 


Bellwattle and 


the 






Laws of Nature 




87 


X. 


May Eve 




101 



XI 



CONTENTS 

XIV. From my Portfolio 147 

XV. An Old String Bonnet 159 
XVI. The New Malady 167 

XVII. Bellwattle and the 

Dignity of Men 179 

XVIII. The Night the Pope 

DIED 193 

XIX. Art 203 

XX. The Value of Idleness 217 
XXI. The Spirit of Compe- 
tition 229 
XXII. Bellwattle on the 

Higher Mathematics 243 

XXIII. The Mystery of the 

Vote 257 

XXIV. Ship's Logs 269 



Xll 



THE PENSION OF THE PATCH- 
WORK QUILT 



THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK 
QUILT 

So MUCH more than you would ever 
dream lies hidden behind the beauty of 
"The Blue Bird," by Maurice Maeter- 
linck. Beauty may be the first of its 
qualities. By the same token, beauty 
may be the last. But in the midst, in the 
heart of it, there is set a deep well of 
truth — fathomless almost — one of those 
natural wells which God, with His 
omnipotent disregard of limitations, has 
sunk into the heart of the world. 

That utter annihilation of death must 
be confusion to many when expressed 
in terms of St. Joseph lilies. Ninety per 
cent, of people will be likely to say, 
"How pretty !" That is the worst of it. 
They ought to be feeling, "How true !" 
3 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Yet what is a man to do? He can 
only express the immortality that he 
knows in terms of the material things 
he sees. St. Joseph lilies are as good as, 
if not better than anything else. But 
they might as well have been artichokes, 
which come up every year. Artichokes 
would have done just as well, only that 
people who object to artichokes would 
have said, "How silly !" 

No one can object to St. Joseph lilies. 
Yet, whatever they are, you will never 
be able to persuade the world to see the 
immortal truth behind the mortal and 
material fact. 

It was the chance of circumstance 
which gave me an example of that 
amazing truth that old people, when 
they have passed away, are given life 
whenever the young people think of 
them. To the hundreds and thousands 
who have been to see "The Blue Bird" 
there are hundreds and thousands to 
say, "How charming that idea is — the 

4 



THE PATCHWORK QUILT 

old people coming to life again when- 
ever any one thinks of them !" 

"And how amazingly true," said I to 
one who had made the remark to me. 

The lady looked at me as at one who 
has made a needless jest and then she 
laughed. Being a lady, she was polite. 

But I hated that politeness. I hated 
the laugh which expressed it. If chance 
should make her eye to fall upon this 
page, she will see how I hated it. She 
will see also how earnestly I had meant 
what I said. For I have found a proof 
of the truth. I know now that the old 
people live. What is more, they know 
it too. When it comes that they pass 
that Rubicon which takes them into the 
shadow of those portals beneath which 
all the old people must wait until the 
Great Gates are opened — when once 
they near the three-score years and ten 
— then they know. But they may not 
speak. They may not say they know. 
They can only hint. 

5 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

It was that an old lady hinted to me. 
Oh, such a broad hint it was ! And that 
is how I know. 

She was close on seventy. Another 
summer, another winter, and yet an- 
other spring, would see her threescore 
years and ten. The pension of the 
country would be given her then and 
this great ambition had leapt into the 
heart of her: 

*T want to leave off work then, sir," 
she said and a smile parted her thin, 
wrinkled lips, lit two fires in her eyes, 
making her whole face sparkle. *T want 
to leave off work then, sir, and I want to 
take a little cottage. I only work now 
so that my sons shan't have the expense 
of keeping me. They've got expenses 
enough of their own." Then her little 
brown eyes, like beads in the deep hol- 
lows, took into them a tender look as 
she thought of the trials and troubles 
which they had to bear. 

"Will you ever be able to get a cottage 
6 



THE PATCHWORK QUILT 

and keep yourself alive on five shillings 
a week?" I asked. 

She set her little mouth. She was a 
wee, tiny creature, shrivelled with age. 
Everything about her was little and 
crumpled and old. 

"It doesn't need much to keep me 
alive now, sir," she said. **The cottage 
I can get for half a crown a week; and, 
of course, my sons are real good boys — 
they send me a little now and then." 

I gazed at her — at her wee, withered 
body, wasted away to nothing in tireless 
energy. 

"You know you won't care to leave 
ofif work when it comes to the time," 
said I; "you'll hate to have nothing 
to do." 

She looked back at me with a cunning 
twinkle in her bright brown eyes. As 
if she were fool enough to think that 
life would be bearable with nothing to 
do! As if she had ever dreamed that 
the hands could be idle while the heart 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

was beating! As if she did not know 
that each must labour until death stilled 
them both ! 

"I shan't have nothing to do, sir," 
she said when she had said it already 
with her eyes. ''Why, it's just the time 
I've been looking for. I'm too busy 
now." 

"What are you going to do?" I asked. 

"Make a patchwork quilt." 

"A patchwork quilt?" 

"Yes." 

"What for?" 

"So that I can leave something be- 
hind me for people to remember me 
when I'm gone." 

She said it quite cheerfully, quite 
happily. Her bright eyes glistened like 
a wink of light in an old brown china 
teapot. She said it, too, in that half- 
reserved way as though there were 
more to tell, but she was not allowed 
even to whisper it. 

Of course, there was more to tell! 



THE PATCHWORK QUILT 

She never would be gone! Not really- 
gone ! Every time you thought of her, 
the light of the other life would start 
back into her eyes, the wrinkled lips 
would smile again. She would never be 
really gone ! And this was a hint — ^just 
a hint to let me at least, for one, make 
sure about it. 

"Then every night they go to bed," 
said I, "and pull the patchwork quilt 
tight round them " 

"Yes — and every time they throw it 
off in the morning " said she. 

"They'll think of you?" 

"They'll think of me," and she 
chuckled like a little child to think how 
clever it was of her. 

"Supposing," said I, suddenly, in a 
whisper as the thought occurred to me 
— "supposing you could do without any 
assistance from your boys " 

"I wish I could," she said; "p'raps I 
can." 

"You wait and see," said I. 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Her seventieth birthday came round, 
and the evening before I posted to her 
my Httle present. I made her my pen- 
sioner as long as she Hves, and on the 
twentieth day of each month she re- 
ceives her tiny portion, and on the 
twenty-first day of that month I get 
back in return a wee bunch of flowers 
tied with red Angola wool. 

"In payment of the Pension of the 
Patchwork Quilt," I write, just on a 
slip of paper; then off it goes every 
month. And as I drop it in the letter- 
box, I can see her surrounded with all 
sorts of materials in divers colours. I 
can hear the scratching of her needle as 
she sews them together. I can picture 
her little eyes bent eagerly upon the 
stitches for fear it might not be done in 
time. 

And I take her gentle hint. 

I know. 



lO 



II 

THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA 
STREET 



II 

THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA STREET 

In Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, 
there is a mouse-trap, a cunningly de- 
vised contrivance in which many a timid 
little mouse is caught. You will find 
them in other streets than this. They 
are set in exactly the same way, the 
same alluring bait, the same doors that 
open with so generous an admission of 
innocence, the same doors that close 
with so final and irrevocable a snap. 

I have never watched the other ones 
at work. But I have seen four mice 
caught at dififerent times in Henrietta 
Street. Therefore, it is about the 
mouse-trap in Henrietta Street that I 
feel qualified to speak. 

One of these little mice I knew well. 
I knew her by name, where she lived — 

13 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

the little hole in this great labyrinth of 
London down which she vanished when 
the day's work was done, or when any 
one frightened her little wits and made 
her scamper home for safety. She even 
came once and sat in my room, just on 
the edge of an armchair, taking tea and 
cake in that frightened way, eyes ever 
peering, head ever on the alert, as mice 
will eat their food. 

So you will see I knew a good deal 
about her. It was through no accident 
of chance that I saw her walk into the 
trap. I had heard that such an event 
was likely. I was on the lookout 
for it. 

During the day-time, she waited at 
the tables in an A.B.C. shop. Don't ask 
me what they paid her for it. I marvel 
at the wage for manual labour when 
sometimes I am compelled to do a little 
job for myself. I wonder why on earth 
the woman comes to tidy my rooms for 
ten shillings a week. But she does. 

14 



THE MOUSE-TRAP 

What is more, I find myself on the very 
point of abusing her when she breaks a 
piece of my Lowestoft china, coming 
with tears in her eyes to tell me of it. 

Whatever it was they paid this little 
mouse of a child, she found it a sufficient 
inducement to come there day after day, 
week after week, with just that one 
short, marvellous evening in the six 
days and the whole of the glorious 
seventh in which to do what she liked. 

I suppose it would have gone on like 
that for ever. She would have con- 
tinued creeping in and out amongst the 
tables, her body on tip-toe, her voice on 
tip-toe, the whole personality of her 
almost overbalancing itself as it worked 
out its justification on the very tip of its 
toes. 

She would have continued waiting on 
her customers, writing her little checks 
in a wholly illegible handwriting, which 
only the girl at the desk could read. She 
would have continued supplying me 

15 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

with the three-pennyworth of cold cod 
steak for my kitten until I should have 
been ordering five cold cod steaks for 
the entire family that was bound to 
come. All these things would have gone 
on just the same, had not the tempter 
come to lure her into the mouse-trap in 
Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. 

I saw him one morning, a dandy- 
looking youth from one of the hosier's 
shops in the Strand near by. He was 
having lunch — a cup of coffee and some 
stewed figs and cream. Taste is a 
funny thing. And she was serving him. 
She had served him. He was already 
hustling the food into his mouth as he 
talked to her. But it was more than 
talking. He was saying things with a 
pair of large calf eyes and she was 
laughing as she listened. 

I would sooner see a woman serious 
than see her laugh; that is, if some one 
else were making love to her. For when 
she is serious there are two ways about 



THE MOUSE-TRAP 

it; but when she laughs there is only- 
time for one. 

When she saw me, the little mouse 
came at once to the counter and took 
down the piece of cold cod steak without 
a word. As she handed me the bag and 
the little paper check, she said — 

''How's the kitten to-day?" 

Then I knew she felt guilty, and was 
trying to distract my mind from what 
she knew I had seen. 

''Why are you ashamed of talking to 
the young man?" I asked. 

"I'm not," said she. 

"Did you notice his eyes ?" said I. 

She looked at me for a moment, quite 
frightened, then she scampered away 
into a corner and began wetting her 
pencil with her lips and scribbling 
things. When the young man tapped 
his coffee-cup, she pretended not to 
hear. But as soon as I stepped out into 
the street, I turned round and saw her 
hurrying back to his table. 

17 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

You guess how it went along. He 
asked her to marry him — then — there 
— at once. You might have known he 
was a man of business. 

She told me all about it when she 
came on one of those short evenings, 
and nibbled a little piece of cake as she 
sat on the edge of my chair. 

He wanted to marry her at once, but 
he was earning only eighteen shillings a 
week and, as far as I could see, spent 
most of that on neckties, socks and hair 
oil. He would no doubt begin to save it 
directly they were married ; but eighteen 
shillings was not enough to keep them 
both. 

"He'd better wait, then," said I. 

"He's so afraid he'd lose me," she 
whispered. 

"And would he?" I asked. 

She picked up a crumb from the floor, 
seeming thereby to suggest that it was 
not in the nature of her to waste any- 
thing. 

i8 



THE MOUSE-TRAP 

"Then I suppose you'll be married in 
secret and go on just the same?" 

She nodded her head. 

"Where does he propose you should 
be married?" 

"At the registry office in Henrietta 
Street." 

"The mouse-trap," said I. 

"No; the registry office," she replied. 

"And when's it to be?" I asked. 

"My next evening after this." 

Well, it came to that next evening. 
I got permission from a firm of book- 
buyers to occupy a window opposite. 
And there I observed that little parlour 
tragedy which you can see in the corner 
of any old wainscotted room if only you 
keep quiet long enough. 

It did not happen successfully that 
first time. For half an hour he walked 
her up and down Henrietta Street. I 
say my publisher come out of his door, 
little dreaming of the comedy that was 
being played as he passed them by. And 

19 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

every time they stopped outside the 
Registry Office windows, she stood and 
read the notices of soldiers deserted the 
army, of children that were lost, while 
he talked of the great things that life 
was offering to them both just inside 
those varnished doors. 

After a time they walked away and I 
came out from my hiding-place. Some- 
thing must have upset her, I thought, 
and I went across to look at the notices 
in the window. There was nothing to 
frighten her there; yet she had scam- 
pered away home to that little hole in 
Clapham, and there vanished out of 
sight. 

But it came at last. It came the very 
next of her short evenings. I was on 
the look-out again. I saw them march 
up to the door. No hesitation this time. 
He must have been eloquent indeed to 
have led her so surely as that. 

I saw him lift the spring of the trap. 
I saw her enter with tip-toe steps, but 

20 



THE MOUSE-TRAP 

more full of confidence now. Then I 
heard the sharp snap of the door as it 
fell. 

'They've caught a mouse," said I to 
the book-buyer as I came downstairs. 

" 'Tis a good thing," said he; "they're 
the very devil for eating my bindings." 



21 



Ill 

THE WONDERFUL CITY 



Ill 

THE WONDERFUL CITY 

I SAW a wonderful city to-day. Rows 
of houses there were. Domes of great 
buildings with their dull brown roofs 
lifted silently into the sky. Long streets 
in tireless avenues led from one cathe- 
dral to another ; some with the straight- 
ness of an arrow, others twisting and 
turning in devious ways, yet all leading, 
as a well-planned street should lead, to 
the crowning glory of some great 
edifice. 

By the chance of Destiny I stood 
above it all and looked down. It was 
strange that only the night before I had 
been dreaming that I was in the City of 
New York, with its vast maze of build- 
ings leaping to the sky. In my dream I 
had stood wrapt in amazement. But I 

25 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

was silent with a greater astonishment 
here. For as I gazed upon it, there had 
come a man to my side and, seeing the 
direction of my eyes, he had said — 

"There warn't a trace o' that there 
last night." 

"Not a trace?" said I. And I said it 
in amazement, for frankly I disbelieved 
him. 

"Not a trace," he repeated solemnly. 

"All that built in one night?" I asked 
again. 

"In one night," said he. 

"But doesn't it astound you?" said I. 
I tried to lift his lethargy to the wonder- 
ment and admiration that was thrilling 
in my mind. 

"It do seem strange," he replied, 
"when yer come to think of it." 

"Well, then, come to think of it!" I 
exclaimed. "You can't do better than 
find the world strange. Come to think 
of it and, finding it strange, you'll come 
to believe in it !" 

26 



THE WONDERFUL CITY 

He stared at me with solemn eyes. 

*'Look at the dome of that cathedral," 
I went on. "Could you set to work and, 
in a single night, build a vast piece of 
architecture like that, so many times 
higher than yourself?" 

"That ain't no cathedral," said he. 

"Have you ever seen a cathedral?" I 
asked. 

"No." 

"Well, then, how do you know it 
isn't?" 

He could give me no reply and I con- 
tinued in my enthusiasm — 

"Look at that street, cut through all 
obstacles, leading straight as though a 
thousand instruments of latter-day 
science had been used in the making of 
it. Look at this avenue turning to right 
and to left. Do you see that great clus- 
ter of buildings, a very parliament of 
houses, set round a vast space that 
would shame the great square of St. 

Peter's, in Rome. Only look at the " 

27 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

I turned round and he had gone. I 
could see his figure retreating in the dis- 
tance. Every moment he turned his 
head, looking round, as one who is pur- 
sued yet fears to show his cowardice by 
running away. He thought I was mad, 
I have no doubt. Every one thinks you 
mad when you say the moon is a dead 
world or the sun is a fiery furnace. To 
be sane, you must only remark upon the 
coldness of the moon, or the warmth of 
the sun. To be sane, you must speak of 
the things of this world only in terms 
of people's bodies. They do not under- 
stand unless. 

And so, when the man left me, I was 
alone, looking over the wonderful city. 
For an hour then, I amused myself by 
naming the different streets, by assign- 
ing to the various buildings the uses 
to which it seemed they might be 
put. 

That huge edifice with the cupola of 
bronze was the Cathedral of Shadows, 
28 



THE WONDERFUL CITY 

where prayers were said in darkness 
and never a lamp was lit. The street 
which led to its very steps, that was 
called the Street of Sighs. Here, in a 
lighter part of the city, approached to 
its silent doors by Tight Street, was the 
Bat's Theatre, where you could hear, 
but never see the performance as it 
progressed. A little further on there 
was Blind Alley — a cul-de-sac, termi- 
nating in a tiny building, the Chapel of 
Disappointment. There was the Ave- 
nue of Progress, the Church of Whis- 
pers, the Bridge of Stones and a thou- 
sand other places, the names of which 
went from me no sooner than they 
crossed my mind. 

It may be possible to build a wonder- 
ful city in a night. I only know how 
utterly impossible it is to name all its 
streets and its palaces in one day. 

And then, while I was still thus em- 
ployed, I saw the man returning with a 
jug of beer. 

29 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

I nodded to the vessel which he car- 
ried in his hand. 

"You don't need to think about that," 
said I, "to understand it." 

A broad grin spread across his face. 
He had found me sane after all. I had 
talked about beer in terms of bodily 
comfort. 

"I need to drink it," said he with a 
laugh. 

"You do," said I. 

Then, as if to appease me for the 
moment e'er he passed on his way, he 
returned to our former subject and, 
with a serious voice, he said — 

"When yer come to think of it," said 
he, "it do seem wonderful that them 
moles is blind." 

"Not so blind," said I, looking down 
at the wonderful city, "not so blind as 
those who can see." 

He thought I had gone mad again, 
and he walked away with his jug of 
beer. 

30 



IV 

BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS 
OF GOD 



IV 

BELL WATTLE AND THE LAWS OF GOD 

I OFTEN wonder why God evolved a 
creature so antagonistic to all His laws 
as woman. I must tell you what I 
mean. 

Bellwattle — she is named Bellwattle 
for the simple reason that one day in an 
inspired moment, she called her husband 
Cruikshank, and he replied giving her 
the name Bellwattle, quite foolish ex- 
cept between husband and wife — Bell- 
wattle has the genuine mother's heart 
for animals. Everything that crawls, 
walks or flies, Bellwattle loves. Some 
things, certainly, she loves more than 
others; but for all she has the deep- 
rooted, protective instinct. Spiders, for 
example, terrify her; flies and beetles 
she loathes, but would not kill one of 

33 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

them even if they crawled upon fier 
dress. And they do. 

Now Bellwattle has a garden which 
she loves. You can see already, if you 
have but the mind for it, the tragic con- 
flict which, with that love of her flowers, 
she must wage between her own soul 
and the laws of God. 

For this, I must tell you, is a lovely 
garden — not one of those prim-set por- 
tions, with well-cut hedges and beds in 
orthodox array. It is an old garden 
that has been allowed to run to ruin and 
Bellwattle, possessing it in the nick of 
time, has planted primroses amongst the 
nettles; has carved a little herbaceous 
border where once potatoes grew. She 
has thrown roses here, there, and every- 
where and, in soap and sugar boxes cov- 
ered with glass at the bottom of the gar- 
den under the nut trees, she forces the 
old-fashioned flowers that we knew — 
you and I — in the long-ago days when 
sweet-william and candytuft were 

34 



BELLWATTLE 

things to boast about and foxgloves 
grew like beanstalks up to heaven. 

But perhaps the most glorious thing 
in Bellwattle's garden, that also in 
which she takes the greatest pride, is 
her hedges of sweet pea. They grow 
in great walls of dazzling colour, and 
the bees hum about them all day long. 
But they are the devil and all to 
raise. 

Now this is where the tragic conflict 
comes in, between the mice and the birds 
and the slugs and Bellwattle's kitten 
and Bellwattle's heart. It is a terrible 
conflict, I can tell you; for the laws of 
God are unalterable, and so is the heart 
of Bellwattle. 

This, then, is what happens: Bell- 
wattle forgot to cover the sweet pea 
seeds with red lead. It is just the sort 
of thing a woman would forget. I 
'doubt if I could think of it myself. 
Then followed the natural result. A 
shrew-mouse got hold of one or two of 

35 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

them, and Bellwattle wondered why on 
earth God ever made shrew-mice. 

"But they're dear Httle things," I told 
her. 

"I can't help that," said she. "What's 
the sense in making a thing that goes 
and eats up other things?" 

Which, of course, was unanswerable. 

Two days after this had happened, 
the kitten was seen playing with a live 
shrew-mouse. 

Bellwattle screamed. 

"Oh, the little wretch! If I could 
only catch it!" 

"What — the mouse?" shouted Cruik- 
shank. 

"No, no; the wretched little kitten! 
Look at the way she's torturing it ! Oh, 
I never saw such a cruel little beast in 
all my life !" and her face grew rosy red. 

Now, Cruikshank is a dutiful hus- 
band. Moreover, he knows positively 
nothing about women. Perhaps that is 
why. When, therefore, he realised that 

36 



BELLWATTLE 

it was the kitten who was the cruel little 
beast, and a sense of duty claiming him, 
he chased it all over the garden, picking 
up stones as he ran. 

''Make her drop it !" cried Bellwattle. 

"I will, if I can hit her," replied 
Cruikshank and, like a cowboy throwing 
a lasso from a galloping horse, he 
flung a stone. The kitten was struck 
upon the flank and in its terror it 
dropped the mouse and fled. Cruik- 
shank approached it and, he assures me, 
with much pride in his prowess picked 
up the poor little mouse by the hind leg. 
Then he looked up and saw Bellwattle's 
face. It was white — ashen white. 

"You've hurt her," she said, half 
under her breath. 

"It's better than hurt," said Cruik- 
shank— "it's dead." 

"No — the kitten — you hit it with a 
stone." 

" 'Twas a jolly good shot," said 
Cruikshank. 

37 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"I never meant you to hit her," said 
Bellwattle. 

Cruikshank looked disappointed. To 
hit a flying object whilst one is in a tor- 
nado of motion one's self is no mean 
feat. Failing an appreciation of the 
woman herself, I am not surprised he 
was disappointed. 

*T made her drop it, anyhow," he said. 

"You've frightened her out of her life 
and now perhaps she'll never come 
back," said Bellwattle, and in and out of 
the garden she went, all through the 
forests of rhododendra — where the kit- 
ten, I should tell you, hunts for big 
game — and with the gentlest, the soft- 
est, the most wooing voice in the world, 
she cried the kitten's name, Cruikshank 
was at a loss to understand it. When 
he met her down one of the paths still 
calling, with tears in her eyes, he assures 
me he felt so ashamed of himself that 
he began, in a feeble way, calling for the 
kitten too. When they met again, still 

38 



BELLWATTLE 

unsuccessful in their search, he dared 
not look her in the face. 

Now this is only one of the conflicts 
that take place in Bellwattle's soul. 
She worships the birds, but they eat the 
young shoots of the sweet peas. Then 
she hates them; then the kitten catches 
one. And now, Cruikshank tells me, he 
will have no hand in the matter. 

"You leave it to God," I advised. 

"I do," said he; "it's too difficult for 
me." 

I believe myself it is too difficult for 
God. 

Only the other day, in the farmyard, 
Bellwattle saw two cocks fighting — 
fighting for the supremacy of the yard. 
Cruikshank and I looked on, really en- 
joying the sport of it in our hearts, yet 
deadly afraid of saying so. 

"Can't you stop them?" exclaimed 
Bellwattle. "They're hurting each 
other!" 

We neither of us moved a hand. 

39 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

''If you don't, I shall have to go and 
do it myself," said she. 

"Much better leave it to God," said I. 
'They're settling matters that have 
nothing to do with you." 

But do you think logic so profound as 
that deterred her? Not a bit of it! 
Out she ran into the farmyard, throw- 
ing her arms about in the air — as 
women will when they wish to interfere 
with the laws of God. 

"Shoo! shoo! shoo!" shouted Bell- 
wattle. 

And one of the cocks, at the critical 
moment of victory, reluctantly leaving 
go of its opponent's comb, looked up 
with considerable annoyance into her 
face and shrieked back — 

"Cock-a-doodle-do!" 

Cruikshank glanced at me out of the 
corner of his eye, and out of the corner 
of his mouth he whispered — 

"We shan't have any eggs to-mor- 



row." 



40 



V 

REALISM 



REALISM 

This word — realism — has lost its mean- 
ing. So, for that matter, has many an- 
other word in the language. Sentiment 
is one and, as a natural consequence, the 
word sentimental is another. Realism 
and sentiment, in fact, have got so 
shuffled about, for all the world like the 
King and Queen in a pack of cards that 
now, instead of sentiment being hand in 
hand with reality, they have become 
almost opposed. To express a senti- 
ment is now tantamount to ignoring a 
reality. 

Joseph Surface may be responsible 
for this. It would not seem unlikely. 
But wherever the responsibility lies, it 
is an everlasting pity; no one has had 

43 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

the common politeness to replace or even 
create a substitute for the thing which 
they have taken away. 

Realism, which now means an expres- 
sion of things as they happen without 
any relation to things as they immor- 
tally are, is robbed of its true signifi- 
cance. But no word is left in its place. 
Sentiment, which now means an ex- 
pression of momentary emotionalism, 
instead of what one perceives to be 
true in the highest moments of one's 
thoughts, has left a blank in the lan- 
guage which no one seems willing to 
or capable of filling up. 

Now all this is an irreparable loss. 
How great a loss it is can be seen by 
the fact that no two people's termi- 
nology is the same when they are dis- 
cussing a subject wherein these words 
must be employed. In the space of five 
minutes both are at cross purposes; in a 
tangle from which they find it well-nigh 
impossible to extricate themselves. 

44 



REALISM 

I do not for one instant propose to 
supply here a solution to the difficulty; 
nor can I coin two words to repair the 
loss sustained. All I wish to do is to 
tell a real story, one that happened only 
a short while ago, to illustrate what 
seems to me to be realism in comparison 
with what realism is supposed to be. 

Our little servant-girl was married — 
married to the young man who brought 
the milk of a morning. The court- 
ship had been going on for some time 
before I realised the glorious things that 
were happening. Then, when I was 
told about it, I used to peep out of my 
bedroom window. As soon as I heard 
that cry of his — impossible to write — 
when he opened the gate and rattled 
with his can down the area steps, then 
up I jumped from my bed and lifted the 
window. 

They must have been wonderful 
moments for Emily, those early morn- 
ings when, with heart beating at the 

45 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

sound of his cry, she had run for the 
big white jug, then dragged out the time 
lest he should think she had opened the 
door too eagerly. 

Many a time have I seen them down 
at the bottom of those area steps; she 
leaning up against the pillar of the door 
watching him, rapt in admiration, while 
he filled up the big white jug. 

It is a fine thing for you when your 
little maid has eyes for the milkman. 
You get a good measure, I can tell you. 
He would not seem stingy to her for 
the world. I have seen him dipping his 
little half-pint measure times and again 
into the big can as he talked to her and, 
as she held out the white jug, just trick- 
ling it in till our two pints were more 
than accounted for. 

All this went on for weeks together. 
Emily sang like a lark in the morning 
when she rose betimes to do her work. 
The worst of the scrubbing was all fin- 
ished with and Emily's hair was tidy 
46 



REALISM 

long before there came that weird fal- 
setto cry, or the sound of the milk cans 
rattled down the area steps. Oh, I can 
assure you, it is an excellent thing when 
your little maid has eyes for the milk- 
man. She never gets up late of a 
morning. 

And then, at last, with great to- 
doings in Emily's home out at Walham 
Green, they were married. I asked 
Emily what she would like for a wed- 
ding present and she said: 

"I'd like one o' them old brass candle- 
sticks — same as what you 'ave in your 
study." 

"You see Emily had acquired some 
taste. I call it taste because it is 
mine. Good or bad, she had ac- 
quired it. 

"Wouldn't you prefer silver?" I 
asked, thinking I knew what silver 
would mean in Walham Green. 

But she only replied: 

"No — I like the brass ones — 'cos 

47 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

they're old. I've a fancy for old 
things." 

So a pair of old brass candlesticks 
was what I gave her. She wrote and 
thanked me for them. She said they 
looked just lovely on George's writing 
table and that one of these days, when 
I was passing that way, I ought to go 
and look at them. 

I did pass through Walham Green 
eventually. It was some months later. 
She had probably forgotten all about 
having asked me, but I paid my visit all 
the same. 

For a moment or so, as I stood on the 
doorstep, I felt a twinge of trepidation. 
I could not remember her married 
name. But it was all right. She 
opened the door herself. Then, as she 
stood there, with a beaming smile light- 
ing her face from ear to ear, reminding 
me so well of those early mornings 
when I used to peep out of my bedroom 
window and peer into the area below, I 
48 



REALISM 

saw that soon there would be another 
Httle Emily or another perky little 
George to bring a smile or a cry into the 
world. 

"You're happy?" said I. 

"Oh— sir!" said she. 

She showed me up then to the sitting- 
room where was George's writing table 
and the pair of old brass candlesticks. 
She pointed to the table. 

" 'E made it 'imself," she said, not 
meaning it in explanation ; but it did ex- 
plain the queer shape. " 'E made it out 
of an old box and I covered it with felt. 
Ain't it splendid?" 

I agreed with my whole heart. Every- 
thing was splendid. The whole room 
might have been made out of an old box. 
And yet I could see what a joy it was 
to her. There was her acquired taste 
in evidence everywhere, but except for 
my poor pair of candlesticks, everything 
was imitation. It made no matter. She 
thought they were really old and liked 

49 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

them immeasurably better than the 
things I had collected with such care at 
home. 

"Could anything be nicer than this ?" 
said I with real enthusiasm. 

"I don't believe it could, sir," said she. 

And then, in little half-amused, half- 
curious, half-frightened whispers, she 
told me how they were going to call the 
baby after me. 

"Supposing it's a girl," said I. 

No — they had not reckoned on that. 
When you make up your mind properly 
to a boy — a boy it is up to the last mo- 
ment. After that, you forget how you 
made up your mind, you are so wildly 
delighted that it is alive at all. 

I walked across to the window. 

"So you're radiantly happy," I said. 

" 'E's just wonderful," she replied; 
"I thought it couldn't last at first — but 
it's just the same." 

I gazed out of the window — envious, 
perhaps. 

50 



REALISM 

"What does this look on to ?" I asked. 

"A slaughter-house, sir." 

She said it full of cheerfulness, full 
of the joy of her own life. I stared 
and stared out of the window. A 
slaughter-house ! A slaughter-house ! 
and here was a little slip of a 
woman passing through those trem- 
bling hours before the birth of her first 
child! 

Now that is what your realist would 
call a chance! He would make a fine 
subject out of that. He would show 
you the growth of that idea in the 
woman's mind. He would picture her 
drawn to gaze out of that awesome win- 
dow whenever they dragged the lowing, 
frightened cattle to their doom. And 
last of all, with wonderful photographic 
touches, he would describe for you the 
birth of a still-horn child. Then with a 
feeling of sickness in the heart of you, 
you would lay down the story and ex- 
claim, "How real !" 

51 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

That is what is meant by reaHsm 
to-day. 

Yet somehow or other I prefer my 
Emily; not because the boy is called 
after me — but because, whatever he 
may be called, he is alive, he is well, and 
he kicks his little legs like wind-mills. 

Now that is an immortal truth. 



'52 



VI 
THE SABBATH 



VI 

THE SABBATH 

When I was a little boy — younger even 
than I am now — my father had strict 
ideas upon Sabbath behaviour. We 
might read nothing, I remember, but 
what was true. Now, if you come to 
think of it, that limits your range of 
literary entertainment in a terrible way. 
It drove me to such books as "Little 
Willie's Promise — a True Story" or 
"What Alice Found — Taken from 
Life." 

One Sunday afternoon, perched high 
in the mulberry-tree, I was found with 
a copy of the Saturday's daily paper. It 
was smeared with the bloodstains of 
many mulberries, whose glorious last 
moments had been with me. 

55. 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"What have you got there?" asked 
my father from below. 

I told him. It was Sunday. My story 
at least was true. 

"Come down at once !" said he. 

I descended, finding many more diffi- 
culties to overcome than I had discov- 
ered in my ascent. 

My father waxed impatient. 

"Can't you get down any quicker than 
that?" he asked. He had a book on 
rose-growing in his hand, which, being 
quite true, he was taking out on that 
glorious afternoon to read and enjoy in 
the garden. 

With all respect, I told him that 
I did not want to break my neck 
and I continued slowly with my 
laborious descent. When I reached 
the ground, he eyed me sus- 
piciously. 

"How dare you read the paper on 
Sunday?" he asked. 

"I was only reading the police re- 
S6 



THE SABBATH 

ports," said I, humbly; "I thought they 
were true." 

He held out his hand expressively. I 
timidly put forth mine, thinking he 
wanted to congratulate me on my taste. 

"The paper !" said he, emphatically. 

I yielded, without a word. 

"Now, if you want to read on Sun- 
Say," said he, "go into the house and 
learn the Collect for the third Sunday 
after Trinity. And never let me see a 
boy of your age reading the paper 
again." 

"Not on week-days ?" said I. 

"No, never!" he replied, and, as he 
walked away, he scanned the Stock Ex- 
change quotations with a stern and un- 
relenting face. 

I do not want to argue about the 
justice of this, for now that I am a 
little older, the after effect, though not 
what my father expected, has proved 
quite admirable. If the newspaper was 
not true enough to read on week-days, 

57 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

let alone Sundays, I came to the con- 
clusion that it must be very full of lies 
indeed. And all this has been very help- 
ful to me ever since. I think of it now 
as I open my daily paper in the morning, 
and I thank my father for it from the 
bottom of my heart. It has saved me 
a deal of unnecessary credulity. 

I remember, too, that all games — all 
games but chess — were strictly forbid- 
den. That also has left an impression 
on my mind — an ineffaceable impres- 
sion about the game of chess. It seems 
a very stern game to me — a game rigid 
in its expression of the truth. The 
King and Queen are always real people, 
moving — far be it from me to allude to 
Royalty — in straightened paths; the 
Queen impulsively, the King in staid 
dignity, one step at a time. I always 
behold the Knight as one, erratic and 
Quixotic in all he does; the Bishop swift 
and to the point, thereby connecting 
himself in my mind with the days when 

58 



THE SABBATH 

the Bishops went out to war and 
brought the Grace of God with them on 
to the battlefield, rather than with the 
Bishops of to-day, who keep the Grace 
of God at home. 

So I think of the game of Chess — the 
only game we were ever allowed to play 
on Sunday — the game my father loved 
so well above all others. 

I don't know what it is about the ob- 
servance of the Sabbath, but to me it 
seems a beautiful idea, like a beautiful 
bell; yet a bell that has been cracked 
and rings with a strange, false, un- 
meaning note. No one seems to be able 
to get the true tone of it. Heaven 
knows they ring it enough. The Church 
and such followers of the Church as my 
father are always pealing its mes- 
sage for the world to hear; yet I 
wonder how many people detect in it 
the sound of that discordant note of 
hypocrisy. 

Nevertheless, there is something 

59 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

gran'd in that conception of One creat- 
ing a vast universe in six days or six 
ages — whichever you will — and resting 
at His ease upon the seventh. Nor is it 
less grand to work throughout a com- 
mon week, making a home, and on the 
Sabbath to cease from labour. The 
whole world is agreed that that day of 
rest is needed; but are they to lay down 
a law that what is rest for one man is 
rest for another? 

If that is the only way they can think 
of doing it ; if that is the only interpre- 
tation of the word — rest — which they 
can find, then, so far as the Sabbath is 
concerned, we shall be a nation of hypo- 
crites or lawbreakers for the rest of our 
days. And of the two, may I be one 
who breaks the law. For, do what you 
will with it, human nature has reached 
that development when it insists upon 
thinking for itself and, one man, think- 
ing it all out most carefully, will declare 
that a game of chess is not an abomina- 
60 



THE SABBATH 

tion of the Sabbath, while another will 
read the police reports in the daily 
papers because they are true. 

Fifty years ago, Charles Kingsley, 
that strenuous apostle of health, urged 
that it was better to play cricket on the 
Green at Eversley than stay at home 
and be a hypocrite — or a gambler, which 
is much the same thing. But his was 
only one honest voice amongst the thou- 
sands of others who have preached a 
very different gospel to that. 

Only a short while ago, at a little 
tennis club in the suburbs of London, 
there came up before the committee the 
question as to whether play should not 
be allowed on Sunday. The club was 
composed of city clerks, of members of 
the Stock Exchange, of men labouring 
the dail)' round to keep together those 
homes of which both the Church and the 
nation are so justly proud. 

Every one seemed in favour of it, 
until the Vicar of the parish rose and 
6i 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

said that seeing there was a high fence 
all round the ground, and that the play- 
ers would be hidden from the sight of 
the public at large, he saw no reason 
why play should not be allowed out of 
Church hours — that was to say, from 
two till six. 

"But," said he, "I must most vehe- 
mently protest against any playing of 
the game of croquet." 

A member of the committee, one with 
a lame leg, who was debarred f i om ten- 
nis, biit was known to make his ten hoop 
break at croquet, asked immediately for 
the reason of this protest. 

"I work all the week in the city," said 
he ; *T have no other chance for playing 
except late on Saturday and on Sunday. 
Why should you prevent croquet ?" 

"Because," said the Vicar, "the sound 
of the croquet balls would reach the ears 
of people passing by. And what do you 
imagine they'd think if they heard 
people playing croquet ? I make no ob- 
62 



THE SABBATH 

jection to tennis because, if played in a 
gentlemanly way, no one outside need 
know that a game was going on — but 
croquet ! You must remember we have 
to consider others as well as ourselves." 

''You think it would make them feel 
envious?" asked the lame man. 

''I mean nothing of the kind," said the 
Vicar. 

'Then what do you imagine they 
would think?" 

"They would realise that the Sab- 
bath — the day of rest — was being 
broken." 

"Then we have your consent to break 
it with tennis," said the Chairman. 

"It seems to me," said the Vicar, 
"that this discussion is being carried 
into the region of absurdity." 

"I quite agree with the Vicar," said 
the lame man. 



63 



VII 

HOUSE TO LET 



VII 

HOUSE TO LET 

If I only knew more about women than 
I do — if I only knew anything about 
them at all — I might be able to under- 
stand the vagarious indetermination of 
the lady who is contemplating the occu- 
pation of a little house quite close to me 
here in the country. 

But I know nothing about the sex — 
well, next to nothing. That is as near 
to the truth as a man will get on this 
subject. His next to nothing, in fact, is 
next to the truth. And so, with this 
open confession of ignorance, I can ex- 
plain nothing about this lady. I can 
only tell you all the funny things she 
does. 

There is this house to let. Well, it is 
67 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

less than a house. An agent, flourish- 
ing his pen over the book of orders to 
view, would call it a maisonette — what 
is more, he would be right. It is a little 
house — a little, tiny house. The view 
from the balcony round the top of it is 
beautiful; but from inside, I doubt if 
you can see anything at all. I have 
never been inside, but that is what I 
imagine. 

Now, the strange thing about this 
lady's attraction for it is that she has 
occupied it once before. There her chil- 
dren were brought up. From there they 
were sent out into the world upon that 
hazardous journey of fortune: that 
same journey in quest of the golden 
apple for which the three sons have 
always set forth, ever since the first 
fairy tale was written. And so the little 
house is filled with recollections for her. 

She remembers — I have heard her 
speak of it — the day when Dicky, the 
youngest boy, fell out from one of the 
68 



HOUSE TO LET 

windows. Not a long fall, but it was 
the devil and all to carry him back into 
the house. She did not say it was the 
devil and all. I say it for her, because 
I know when she was telling it, that was 
the way she wanted to put it. But a 
woman can look a little phrase like that, 
which is so much better than saying it. 

She remembers also the day when 
they had nothing in the house to eat 
and she, saying such things to her hus- 
band as God has given him memory for 
for the rest of his life, had to go out and 
scrape together whatever she could find. 
It was a cold day. There was snow on 
the ground. Snow in the beginning of 
May! Heaven only knows how she 
managed. But she succeeded. 

There is that about women. They 
will get food for their children, even 
when famine is in the land, or they will 
die. I know that much about them. 
They have died in Ireland. 

Well, all these things she remembers ; 
69 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

things which, softened by time, are no 
doubt pleasant memories ere this. And 
yet she cannot make up her mind. 
Where she has been since they went 
away, I do not know. TraveUing, I im- 
agine. But here she is back once more, 
doubtless worrying the life out of the 
house agent, who is continually being 
jostled in the balance of thinking he has, 
then thinking he has not, let a very 
doubtful property. 

Every morning she comes and looks 
over the old place. I suppose she is 
staying in the neighbourhood. From 
every side she views it and all the while 
she talks to herself. Now, women do 
this more than you would think. They 
do it when they are going to bed at 
night. They do it when they are getting 
up in the morning. It always seems as 
if there were some one inside them to 
whom they must tell the truth, because, 
I believe, they are the most truthful 
beings in the world — to themselves. 
70 



HOUSE TO LET 

Only yesterday, when she thought she 
was absolutely alone, I heard her say- 
ing— 

"You wouldn't like it, you know, once 
you were fixed up there again. It's out 
of the way, of course, quiet, but you 
wouldn't like it." 

And then, having told herself the 
truth, she began immediately to con- 
tradict it. 

Why they do this is more than I can 
tell you. The only people who can tell 
the truth, they seemingly dislike it more 
than any one else. A man loves the 
truth, lives for it, dies for it, but seldom 
tells it. With a woman it is just the 
opposite, and I cannot for the life of me 
tell you why. 

"You'd be a fool if you took it," she 
said to herself as she went away to the 
house agent's. "You don't know who 
you'll have for neighbours. They might 
be disgusting people." 

I followed her to the house agent's, 

71 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

and this, if you please, was the first 
question she put to him — 

"What sort of people do you think'll 
take the house over the way?" 

I pitied the house agent from the bot- 
tom of my heart, because how on earth 
could he know? Yet upon his answer 
hung all his chances of letting. I 
thought he replied very cleverly. 

"They're sure to be good people," said 
he; "we only get the best class round 
here." 

And then, just listen to her retort — 

"But you can't tell," said she. 
"What's the good of pretending you 
know. It might be a butcher and his 
family. You couldn't stop them if they 
wanted the house." 

The agent leaned back in his chair, 
then leaned forward over his desk, turn- 
ing over pages and pages of a ledger. 

"Well, will you take an order to view 
this one ?" said he. "Same rent — a little 
more accommodation." 
72 



HOUSE TO LET 

"No, I don't want to see any more," 
she replied. "This is the one I like 
best." 

"Well, would you like to settle on 
that ?" said the agent. "I'll write to the 
landlord to-night." 

"I'll let you know to-morrow," said 
she. 

For three weeks she has gone on just 
like this. 

And it is still to let, that little house 
in the bowl of my old apple tree. But 
every morning she comes just the same 
and, sitting on the topmost branch, she 
chatters to herself incessantly for half 
an hour, as starlings and women do — 
for she is a lady starling. I shall be 
curious to know when she makes up her 
mind, but, knowing nothing about 
women and less than nothing about 
starlings, I cannot say when or what it 
will be. 



73 



VIII 
A SUFFRAGETTE 



VIII 

A SUFFRAGETTE 

She thanked God, she told me, that she 
had never been married. 

She was quite old — well, quite old? 
Can you ever say that of a woman? 
Women are quite old for five years, but 
that is all. They are quite old between 
the ages of thirty-five and forty. Then, 
if God has given them a heart and they 
have taken advantage of the gift, youth 
comes back again. It is not the youth 
under the eyes, perhaps ; it is the youth 
in the eyes. It is not the youth around 
the lips ; it is the youth of the words that 
issue from them. 

Between thirty-five and forty a 
woman is trying to remember her youth 
and forget her age. That makes her 

77 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

quite old — quite, quite old. After that 
— well, I have said, it rests with God 
and her. 

So Miss Taviner was not quite old. 
She was quite young. She was sixty- 
three. Her eyes twinkled, even when 
she thanked God for her spinsterdom. 

"You've got," said I, "a poor opinion 
of men." 

" 'Tisn't my opinion — 'tis my 
mother's," said she. 

I felt there was nothing to be said to 
that. It would have been unseemly on 
my part — who have only just found my 
own youth — to disagree with an opinion 
of such long standing. 

You must understand that Miss Tav- 
iner could never have been beautiful. 
God may have meant her to be; I don't 
know anything about that. I am only 
aware how Nature interfered. For 
when she was young — a child not more, 
I think, than six — she was struck by 
lightning, paralysed for a time, and, 

78 



A SUFFRAGETTE 

when she recovered, her eyes were at 
loggerheads. They looked every way 
but one. 

But I like her little shrivelled face, 
nevertheless. It is crafty, perhaps. She 
looks as if she counts every apple on 
the trees in her old garden. Why 
shouldn't she ? She has a poor opinion 
of men. Besides, the apples at Beech 
House Farm — where her father lived 
and his father before him — those apples 
are part of the slender income by which 
she manages to cling to the old home. 
Who could blame her for counting 
them ? I don't even blame her for hav- 
ing the cunning look of it in her eyes. 

No — I suppose, though I do like her 
face, it is because I haven't got to love 
it. Possibly that is why she has so 
poor an opinion of men. Some man 
found that he could not love her face 
and broke his faith with her. At least, 
I thought that then. Some heartless 
wretch has jilted her, I thought — taught 

79 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

her to love, and then caught sight of a 
prettier pair of eyes. I must admit he 
need not have been on the lookout for 
them. 

"But," said I presently, when these 
ideas had passed aw^ay, "don't you ad- 
mit men have their uses ?" 

"None!" she said emphatically. 

"Then why," I asked, "do you hang 
up that old top hat of your father's on 
a peg in the kitchen, so that the first 
tramp, as you open the door to him, 
may see it?" 

"So that he'll think I've got a man in 
the house, I suppose," she replied. 

"That's why you have a couple of 
glasses and a whiskey bottle on the table 
in the evening?" 

"Yes." 

"Then a man is useful," said I, "as 
far as his hat is concerned?" 

She winked her crooked eyes at me 
and she said, "Yes, so long as there 
isn't a head inside of it." 
80 



A SUFFRAGETTE 

I laughed. "Then really," I con- 
cluded, *'you do hate men?" 

*T suppose I do," said she. 

"Why?" 

I thought I was going to hear of her 
little romance with its pitiable ending. 

But no, she merely shrugged her 
shoulders, stuck an old tam-o'-shanter 
on her head, and went out to see if the 
gardener was doing his fair share of 
work. 

I might never have thought of this 
again, but it chanced that I bought from 
her, amongst her old relics of the fam- 
ily property, a mahogany box, with 
brass lock and brass handle. Inlaid, it 
was, round the edge of the lid. Quite 
a handsome thing. She had lost its key. 
It was locked and, seeing that she did 
not want to go to the expense of getting 
a key made, she sold it to me. 

I got a key made. I opened it. It 
was empty, but for one thing. There 
was a letter at the bottom. It is un- 
8i 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

questionable that I had no right to read 
it. It is also unquestionable that I did. 

"My dear Miss Taviner," it ran, 
"these evenings that it is so light they 
may he playing cricket on the green. 
Shall we meet at the Cross beyond the 
forge? — Yrs. in haste, Henry Yeoman." 

'That's the man," said I to myself. 
"He was ashamed of being seen with 
her even then. No wonder she has a 
poor opinion of men." My anger went 
out to Henry Yeoman on the spot. 

But I did him an injustice. For, in- 
quiring at the forge, which I happened 
to pass some days later, I stopped and 
asked the smith about him. 

"Henry Yeoman," said he, "why he's 
left these parts nigh fifteen years. He's 
gone to live at Reading." 

"Is he married?" I asked. 

"Yes; married Miss Taviner." 

"Miss Taviner?" 
82 



A SUFFRAGETTE 

"Yes; sister of her down at Beech 
House Farm." 

''Never knew she had a sister," said I. 

"Yes. Oh, she had three; all mar- 
ried, they are." 

"Why did she never marry?" I asked, 
for then I knew the letter was not to 
her. 

"Why?" He tapped the anvil with 
his hammer and he laughed a bass ac- 
companiment to its ring. "Because no 
one 'ud ever look at her, I suppose." 

I saw it then. I saw why she had so 
poor opinion of men. I saw why she 
thanked God she had never married. 

No man had ever taught her what 
love was. No man had ever even jilted 
her. No wonder she hated them. No 
wonder she counted her apples. 



83 



IX 

BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS 
OF NATURE 



IX 

BELL WATTLE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE 

It is not mine to distinguish between 
the laws of God and the laws of Nature. 
This is a distinction peculiar to Bell- 
wattle. 

It would be difficult to give precise 
definition to her conception of the subtle 
and imaginary line which divides the 
two, but, so far as I can grasp it, it 
would seem to be this : The laws of God 
determine those things which happen 
despite themselves and to the confusion 
of all Bellwattle's pre-conceived opin- 
ions. When, for example, a caterpillar, 
in its hazardous struggle for existence, 
eats into the heart of her favourite rose- 
bud, that is, for Bellwattle, one of the 
laws of God. 

87 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Now, the laws of Nature are quite 
different to this. The laws of Nature 
— so Bell wattle, I fancy, would tell 
you — command those things which 
happen of their own accord and to the 
satisfaction of all Bellwattle's precon- 
ceived anticipations. When, for ex- 
ample, a rose tree bears a thousand blos- 
soms from May to the end of Decem- 
ber ; when the peas are ready to pick in 
the first week in June, and the delphini- 
ums have grown yet another inch when, 
every morning, she steps out into the 
garden to look at them — these are, for 
Bellwattle, the orderly workings of the 
laws of Nature. 

I see her point. I sympathise with 
her distinction and I wish — oh, how 
I wish! — that I could think as she 
does. For it is a fixed idea with her. 
Nothing will shake it. And I have 
never met any one whose appreciation 
of Nature is as great as hers. 

Only the other day — so Cruikshank, 



BELLWATTLE 

her husband, tells me — they came across 
a wild flower in one of the hedges. In 
blossom and general appearance it bore 
so close a relation to Shepherd's Needle 
that at first sight of it, he dubbed it 
straight away. On closer examination 
it was found that there were no needles ; 
neither could it be Shepherd's Purse, 
for there were no purses. 

"Perhaps it's a Shepherd's Needle 
gone wrong?" suggested Bellwattle, and 
Cruikshank tells me he left it at that. 
The sublime conception of it was beyond 
the highest reaches of his imagination. 
On another occasion, when I had the 
honour to accompany her on her walk, 
we heard the raucous note of a bird 
from somewhere away in the meadows. 
"I bet you don't know what that is !" 
said I, to test her knowledge; but she 
answered quite easily — 
"It's a partridge." 

"No," said I, a little disappointed at 
her mistake, "that's a pheasant." 
89 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

''Oh, the same thing," said Bellwattle, 
unperturbed. 

"Of course; they both begin with a 
P," said I. 

And then she looked at me out of the 
corner of her eyes and blinked. I thank 
God I did not smile. She would never 
have believed in me again. 

But it is when Bellwattle puts out 
her gentle hand to help Nature in her 
schemes that I think she is most lovable 
of all. This is the way with all true 
women when they love Nature for Na- 
turals sake. In fact, it sometimes seems 
to me, when I watch Bellwattle fore- 
stalling God at every turn, that she is 
Eve incarnate, the mother of all living. 
For to see her in the garden and the 
country, you would feel that she almost 
believes she has suffered the labours of 
maternity for every single thing that 
lives, from the first snowdrop opening 
its eyes to the spring to the last little 
tremulous calf, with its quaking knees, 
90 



BELLWATTLE 

which the old cow in the farmyard pre- 
sents to our neighbour over the way. 

"The poor wee mite," she says, and 
she gives it the tips of her fingers with 
which to ease its toothless gums. 

But sometimes, as woman will, she 
carries this motherdom to excess. You 
may aid Nature to a point. Men do it 
in their pre-eminently practical way, 
which has science for the dry heart of it. 
Watch them pruning rose trees. I be- 
lieve they take a positive pleasure in the 
knife. I am perfectly sure Bellwattle's 
garden would be a forest of briars were 
it not that Cruikshank keeps locked 
within a little drawer a knife with a 
handle of horn, which he takes out in 
the month of March, when Bellwattle 
goes to pay a visit to her mother up in 
town. In fact, the visit is arranged for 
that purpose. 

*'I suppose it has to be done," she 
says, packing her trunk. "But it seems 
a silly business to me that you should 

91 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

have to cut the arms and legs off a thing 
before it can grow properly. They bore 
roses last year. Why not this?" 

But where Nature needs no aid, there 
is Bellwattle ready with her ever-help- 
ing hand. She constitutes herself in the 
capacity of nurse to all the birds in the 
garden. 

Only this spring a linnet built its nest 
in the yew tree that grows in our hedge. 
In an unwise moment Cruikshank in- 
formed her of it. She ran off at once 
and counted the eggs. Five there were. 
She had seen eggs before, but these 
were the most beautiful that any bird 
had ever laid in its life. 

From that moment she became so 
fussy and excitable that Cruikshank 
was at a loss to know what to do with 
her. 

"She'll drive the bird away," said 
Cruikshank to me. 

"Well, tell her so," said I. 

"I did." 

92 



BELLWATTLE 

"Well?" 

"She simply said, The bird must 
know that I don't mean to do any 
harm.' " 

"No doubt she's right," said I. "I 
don't suppose there's an animal in the 
whole of creation that doesn't recognise 
the maternal instinct when it sees it." 

That was all very well while there 
were only eggs to be reckoned with. But 
when one morning Bellwattle went to 
the nest and found five black little heads, 
like five little Hottentots grown old and 
grizzled, with shrivelled tufts of grey 
hair, there was no containing her. 

She clapped her hands. She danced 
up and down and — 

"Oh, the dears !" she cried. "Oh, the 
little dears! I must give them some- 
thing to eat. What will they eat?" 

I looked at Cruikshank. I had come 
round that morning to count his rose- 
buds with him — a weakness of his to 
which he always succumbs. He tells me 

93 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

it is the only way he can justify his use 
of the knife. I looked at him and he 
looked at me. 

*'This is going too far," he whispered. 
"Can't we put a stop to it?" 

"Leave it to me," said I, and Bell- 
wattle, hearing our whispers, turned 
round and stared at us. 

"What is it?" she asked. 

"We were talking," said I. 

"Yes, but what about?" 

She was fired with suspicion. 

"We were wondering the best thing 
you could feed them with." 

Suspicion fell from her. 

"What do you think?" she asked. 
"Would corn be any good?" 

Cruikshank blew his nose. 

"A little bit solid," he said dubiously. 

"You can't do better than give them 
the same as their mother does," I sug- 
gested. 

"What's that?" she asked. 

"Small worms," I replied, and I 

94 



BELLWATTLE 

watched her face; "those Httle thin, red, 
raw ones." 

She walked away, saying nothing. 
She hates worms. Well, naturally — 
every woman does. 

Cruikshank laid an appreciative hand 
on my shoulder. 

"That's done it," he said. "I was 
afraid she'd go worrying about till she 
made the poor little beast desert, but 
that's done it." 

I was not so sure myself. Therefore 
it surprised me not at all the next morn- 
ing when, arriving unexpectedly in the 
garden, I came upon her unawares, 
carrying at arm's length two little wrig- 
gling worms. There was an expression 
on her face which will live in my mem- 
ory for ever. I concealed myself be- 
hind a tree and watched. I could see 
nothing, but this is what I heard — 

"Oh, you funny little mites! Bless 
your little hearts! Here, take it — take 
it! Open your mouth, you silly! Not 

95 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

so wide — not so wide. Well, if you all 
sit up like that you'll fall out, you know. 
Lie down, you silly little fools ; lie down ! 
lie down ! Now shut your mouth on it 
and you'll find it. Shut your mouth !" 

And so on and so on, till my laughter 
gave me away. 

"Were you listening all the time?" 
she asked. 

I nodded my head. 

"So was the mother linnet," said I, 
"up in that lilac tree. What do you 
think she'll do now ? She'll think you've 
been trying to kill them." 

"No, she won't," said Bellwattle. "I 
left a big worm on the edge of the nest 
for her, so that she'll know I've been 
feeding them." 

But something worse than that hap- 
pened. With all this attention paid to 
that which by every law of Nature 
should have been kept a dead secret, the 
attention of Bellwattle's cat was at- 
tracted to the spot. Next morning the 

96 



BELLWATTLE 

nest was found empty and one of those 
brown little Hottentots hung dangling 
in the branches. 

Bellwattle came running down the 
garden, wringing her hands, the tears 
glittering in her eyes, her lips quivering 
as she told us what had happened. 

"That comes of meddling with Na- 
ture," began Cruikshank, but I stopped 
him very quickly. 

"If you stop her tears and make her 
angry," I whispered, "she'll never for- 
give you. Let her cry; it's the way; 
women learn." 



97 



X 

MAY EVE 



X 

MAY EVE 

I WAS told that some one wanted to see 
me. 

"Who is it?" I asked. 

They told me it was an old lady, who 
would give no name. I inquired of her 
appearance. "She is an old lady," they 
replied, "and very, very small." I think 
I must have guessed, for I asked no fur- 
ther questions. I told them to show 
her in. 

If I could only describe to you the 
way she came into the room ! She was 
so wee and so tiny. Her eyes sparkled 
with such brilliancy, she might have 
been seven instead of seventy. Then, 
when she bobbed me a curtsey as she 
entered, I could have believed she was 

lOI 



' THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

a fairy come from the uttermost ends of 
the earth to attend a christening. 

There was every good reason for my 
belief, not the least of which was that it 
was May Eve. In Ireland, as you know, 
the folk dare not go out after dark on 
this eventful day. The fairies are in the 
fields, fairies good and bad, and heaven 
only knows what you may not come 
across if you wander through the 
boreens or across the hillside when once 
the evening has put on her mantle of 
grey. 

Not only will you meet them in the 
fields, moreover ; they come to your very 
door and milk they ask of you, and fire 
and water. Now, except that she asked 
for nothing, but rather brought a gift 
to me, my wee visitor might have been 
a fairy come out of the land beyond the 
edge of Time; come ten million miles to 
this old farmhouse which hugs itself so 
close to the land in the valley between 
the hills. 

I02 



MAY EVE 

For the moment I felt my heart in 
my throat. I had added things together 
so quickly in my mind that I was sure 
my belief was right. She was a fairy. 
May Eve — the very time of day, when 
the grey mist is creeping over the 
meadows, and the river runs blip, blip 
between the reeds — the strange and 
youthful glitter in her wee brown eyes, 
set deep in the hollows of that old and 
wrinkled face ; then last of all, her bob- 
bing curtsey and the way she smiled at 
me as though she had a blessing in her 
pocket — these were the things I added 
so swiftly together in my mind. The 
result was inevitable. Undoubtedly she 
was a fairy. Now see how strange the 
tricks life plays with you; for, whereas 
I had believed in fairies before, I knew 
now that my belief had been vain. I 
had only believed in the idea of them — 
that was all. I had only said I believed 
because I knew I should never see one 
to contradict the doubt which still lin- 
103 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

gered in my heart. That is the way 
most of us say our credo. 

*TVe brought you your travelHng- 
rug," said she, and she bobbed again. 

"What traveUing-rug ?" I asked. 

And then, what happened, do you 
think? I could hardly believe my eyes. 
She took from off her arm what seemed 
at first to me some garment, lined richly 
with orange-coloured sateen. My eyes 
grew wider in wonder as she laid it 
down and spread it out upon the floor. 

It was a patchwork quilt ! 

Oh, you never did see such a galaxy 
of colours in all your life! Blues and 
reds, greens, yellows and purples, they 
all jostled each other for a place upon 
that square of orange-coloured sateen. 
All textures they were, too ; some velvet, 
some silk, and some brocade. It was as 
if the caves of Aladdin had been thrown 
open to me, and I were allowed just for 
one moment to peep within. 

But that was not all. 
104 



MAY EVE 

For when I said: "You've fin- 
ished it, then?" I saw to what pur- 
pose that completion had been made. 
Right in the centre of all those 
dazzling patches was a square of 
purple — purple that the Emperors used 
to wear — while worked across in regal 
letters of gold there were my own 
initials. 

I stared at them. I went down on my 
knees, looking close into the stitches to 
make sure that there was no mistake. 
Then I gazed up at her. 

"But it's for me?" said I. 

She nodded her head and her whole 
face was lighted up with pride and satis- 
faction. She was so excited, too. Her 
eyes danced with excitement. You 
know the quaint little twisted attitudes 
that children get into when they are 
giving you a present which they have 
made themselves; they are half con- 
sumed with fear that you are going to 
laugh at them and half consumed with 
105 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

pride in their own handiwork. She was 
just Hke that. 

Lest you do not know already, I 
should tell you that I had made her my 
pensioner as long as she lives, in order 
to enable her to leave off work and make 
this patchwork quilt whereby she might 
be remembered by those who slept be- 
neath it when she had gone to sleep. 
But I had thought to myself, surely it 
will be in the family. I had wondered 
who would become the proud possessor 
of it. Imagine my amazement, then, 
when I realised that it was my very 
own. 

"And you'll think of me when I'm 
gone, won't you, sir — when you go to 
bed at night?" she said. 

'Think of you?" said I. "You may 
well call it a travelling-rug. I only have 
to wrap this round me and, with the 
mere wish of it, I shall be in the land of 
dreams — millions and millions of miles 
away." 

io6 



MAY EVE 

"P'raps I shall be there, too," said 
she, clasping her hands. 

*'And then we'll meet," said I. 

She began folding it up with just that 
care which she had used in the making 
of it. She folded it one way. 

"It's nice and warm," said she. 

She doubled it another way. 

"Every one of the squares is lined 
with sateen." 

She redoubled it once more. 

"And it's all padded with cotton 
wool." 

When she said that, she stood up with 
her face all beaming with smiles, and 
she laid it in my hands. 

Then I did what I had wanted to do 
from the very first moment I saw her. 
I took her little face in my hands and I 
kissed the soft, warm, wrinkled cheeks. 

"When I was very unhappy," said I, 
"I used to entertain what is called a be- 
lief in fairies. Now that I know what it 
is to be happy, I find them. It's a very 
dififerent thing." 

107 



XI 
THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 



XI 

THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 

LiMEHOusE, Plaistow, and the East 
India Docks — these are places in the 
world to wonder about. Yet even there 
beauty manages to creep in and grow 
in a soil where there would seem to be 
nothing but decay. 

There are societies, I believe, which 
exist in those quarters, whose en- 
deavour it is to lift the mind of the East 
End inhabitant to an appreciation of 
what the West End knows to be Art. I 
am sure that all their intentions are 
the sincerest in the world. But what is 
the good of Art to a dock labourer and 
his wife? 

We have only arrived at Art our- 
selves after generations and generations 
III 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

of a knowledge of what is beautiful. So 
absolutely have we arrived, moreover, 
that we care no longer for what is beau- 
tiful ; we only care for Art. 

That, however, is another question 
too long to enter into here. But to teach 
Art to the East India dock labourer 
when he knows so little of beauty, that 
is a process of putting carts before 
horses — a reduction to absurdity which 
can be seen at once. 

Now when I was a journalist — that 
is to say, when I wrote lines of words 
for a paper which paid me so much per 
line for the number of lines which the 
chief sub-editor was good enough to use 
— I was one day despatched to the East 
End to see if there were any stuff — I 
speak colloquially — in a poor people's 
flower show. 

"It may be funny," said the editor. 

"It might be," said I. 

"Well, make it funny," said he, for I 
think he caught the note in my voice. 

112 



THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 

I pocketed my notebook and set off 
for the East End. Oh, there were all 
sorts of flowers and doubtless it looked 
the funniest of flower shows you would 
ever have seen. For example, the 
qualification necessary for exhibition 
was that your plant had been grown 
in a pot and on a window sill. It was 
a qualification not diflicult to fulfil. 
In all my wanderings there to find 
the place, no plot of ground did I 
see, save a graveyard around a 
church. But the only things that grew 
there were the stones in memory of 
the dead; and they, begrimed with soot 
and dirt, were sorry flowers to grace 
a tomb. 

You can imagine the pitiful, shriv- 
elled little things that had struggled 
to maintain life on the window sills of 
the houses in those dingy courts and 
darksome alleys. Never did I see such 
an array in all my life. They would al- 
most, when you thought of country ga*-- 

113 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

dens where the daffodils stand up and 
brave the April winds, they would al- 
most have brought the tears to your 
eyes. 

Little geraniums there were, blinking 
their poor, tired eyes at the light. One 
woman brought a plant of sweet pea, 
which was climbing so wearily, yet so 
anxiously out of its little pot of red up 
a wee thin stake of wood. You knew 
it would never reach the light of the 
heaven it so yearned to see. The two 
faint blossoms that it bore were pale, 
like fragile slum children. What would 
I not have given then to wrench it out 
of its poor bed and give it to the great 
generous sweep of an open field, with a 
hedge of hawthorn perhaps on which to 
lean its tired arms. 

The woman saw my eyes in its direc- 
tion and she beamed with conscious 
pride. 

"It doesn't look very healthy," said 
I. 

114 



THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 

She gazed at it and then at me with 
open wonder in her eyes. 

"Not 'ealthy?" she said — "why, IVe 
never seen none looking better. Look 
at that pansy over there — it can't 'old 
its 'ead up." 

"But why compare it with the worst 
one in the show?" I asked — "I didn't 
mean it as a personal criticism when I 
said it wasn't healthy. I'm sure you've 
taken a tremendous amount of care 
over it." 

"Care!" she exclaimed — "I should 
just think I 'ave. It's 'ad all the scrap- 
in's off the road in front of our 'ouse." 

I passed on, for the judges were com- 
ing round and the young curate just 
down from the university has not a 
proper respect for the Press. He has 
probably written for it. Now the young 
curate of the parish was the principal 
judge. 

I did not hear what he said about 
the sweet pea. I had gone further on 

115 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

to where a woman was standing with 
her hand affectionately round a pot 
from which rose a fine, healthy plant, 
with rich, deep purple flowers nestling 
in the leaves that grew to the very 
pinnacle of the stem. There I waited. 
I wanted to hear what the judges were 
going to say about this one. I wanted 
to hear very much indeed. 

This woman, too, seeing my interest 
in her exhibit, smiled with generous 
satisfaction. 

"Think I've got a chanst, sir?" 

"I don't know," said I — *'it's fine and 
strong." 

"And look at all the blossoms," said 
she with enthusiasm — "you wouldn't 
believe it, but my son brought that from 
the country last year when 'e went for 
the houtin'. 'E brought it back, dragged 
up almost to the roots it was — an' 
it was in flower then. Tut it in a 
vawse,' I says, but my ole man, 'e says 
— 'Shove it in a bloomin' pot,' 'e says, 
ii6 



THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 

'that'll grow,' 'e says — 'it's got roots to 
it/ So we puts it in a pot and sticks it 
out on a window sill, and there it is. It 
died down to nothin' last winter, but my 
ole man, 'e wouldn't let me throw the pot 
away. 'Give it a chanst of the spring,' 
'e says — 'give it a chanst of the spring.' 
And bless my soul, if we didn't see 
little bits of green sticking up through 
the mould before the beginning of last 
March." 

"It's been a constant interest since 
then?" said L 

"Hinterest! Why my ole man said 
as I was killin' it, the way I watered it 
and looked after it." 

"And what do you call it?" I asked. 

"I don't know what it is," she said. 
"Nobody seems tq know. We call it 
—William." 

I laughed. "There is a flower called 
Sweet William," said I. 

"Perhaps that's it," she answered, 
thoughtfully. "But it don't smell— 
117 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

leastways, I've never smelt nothin' from 
it." 

I stood aside as the judges came up. 
When he saw the plant, standing so 
bravely and so healthily, and so beauti- 
fully in its bright red pot, the curate 
laughed out loud. 

"Look here," said he to one of the 
other judges, who came up and laughed 
as well. 

"Do you know what you've got here, 
my good woman ?" asked the curate. 

She shook her head. 

"Well, we can't give you anything 
for this — it's only a common nettle — a 
red dead nettle." 

"But it's a beautiful colour — ain't it?'* 
said she, with a flame of red in her face. 

"Oh — it's a beautiful colour, no 
doubt," replied the curate easily — "so, I 
hope, is every plant that grows in the 
highways and the byways." 

"Well, then, why shouldn't it get a 
prize?" she demanded. 
ii8 



THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 

''Because it's only a common dead 
nettle," said the curate, very softly, 
turning away wrath. 

*'But it's 'ealthier and stronger and 
finer than any o' them other flowers," 
said she. 

"Quite so — no doubt — you might ex- 
pect that. These others are cultivated 
flowers, you see. This is only a com- 
mon dead nettle." 

I saw the editor when I returned. 

"No stuff worth having," said I — 
disconsolately, for I was thinking of my 
few short lines. 

"Nothing funny at all ?" he asked. 

"Nothing," said I, and I told him 
about the red dead nettle. 

"But I think that's dammed funny," 
he said. 

"Do you?" I said. 



119 



XII 

THE FEMININE APPRECIATION 
OF MATHEMATICS 



XII 

THE FEMININE APPRECIATION OF 
MATHEMATICS 

If I could approach mathematics with 
the same spirit as do ninety-eight 
women out of a hundred, I might be 
rather good at them. As it is, my power 
of will in face of algebraical figures, in 
face even of numbers that exceed the 
functions of the simplest forms of 
arithmetic, my power of will stands 
aghast. I can do nothing. 

Now, ninety-eight women out of a 
hundred are far more ignorant of the 
mere rudiments of mathematics than 
am I; yet with an instinct which I 
would give my soul to possess they can 
solve problems and carry on the ordi- 
nary business of life with an ability that 
is little short of marvellous. 
123 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Truly, a little learning is a dangerous 
thing, and most especially when that 
learning is of mathematics. If once 
you have tried to weigh hydrogen on 
an agate-balanced scale, you are for 
ever unfitted for the common-or-garden 
mathematical exigencies of life. Now 
this is where a woman has all the pull. 
The most that she has ever had to cal- 
culate the weight of is a pound of flour 
or seven and a half pounds of sirloin 
already weighed and attested by the 
butcher. When, then, it comes to weigh- 
ing the baby on the scale-pans in the 
kitchen, she will fling on the weights 
with such a degree of confidence that 
the result is bound to be correct. You 
and I, on the other hand, would ap- 
proach the matter with such delicacy of 
touch — believing, and quite rightly, that 
a baby was of far more importance than 
all the immeasurable quantities of 
hydrogen in the world — with such 
delicacy and care should we approach 
124 



THE FEMININE APPRECIATION 

it that the poor infant would have 
caught its death of cold and be in a com- 
atose condition of exhaustion before we 
had decided that the scale-pan was clean 
or the weights were in proper condition 
to be used. 

This smattering of general education 
is a fatal business. It unfits men for all 
the real and useful demands of life. 

Only the other day, my friend Cruik- 
shank broke a brass candlestick and 
looked up helplessly from the wreck. 

"Where on earth can I get any solder 
from ?" said he. 

"What's solder?" asked Bellwattle, 
his wife. 

The question was so direct that, for 
the moment, it confused him. 

"Solder?" he repeated. "Solder? 
Oh, it's stuff to mend metal with." 

"Til do it with sealing-wax," said 
Bellwattle. 

Cruikshank laughed and, as he said to 
me afterwards — 

125 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"I gave it to her to do. It's best to 
let women learn by experience. Sealing- 
wax!" And he laughed knowingly at 
me. I knew he meant it kindly, so I 
laughed with him; but the next day I 
made inquiries about the candlestick. 

"How did she get on?" I asked. 

"By Jove, she's done it," said he. "It 
won't bear much knocking about, of 
course, but it stands as firm as a rock. 
It's only a woman," he added, "who'd 
think of mending a brass candlestick 
with sealing-wax." 

"It's only a woman who'd succeed," 
said I. 

But this has nothing to do with 
mathematics, and it is of mathematics 
that I want to speak. 

If you have any interest in photog- 
raphy, you know how tricksy a matter 
is the exposure of a plate. It is tricksy 
to you and I will tell you why. It is 
because your academic study of the proc- 
ess has taught you that the two-thou- 
126 



THE FEMININE APPRECIATION 

sandth part of a second is sufficient ex- 
posure in order to get cloud effects. 
Conceive, then, how your brain whirls 
with figures when you come to take a 
photograph of an interior or a portrait 
of some one sitting in a room. I will 
not remind you of the tortures which 
your mind must suffer, nor the result of 
such torture when at last you develop 
the plate in the dark-room — both are 
too painful to speak about. Now, a 
woman knows nothing about this two- 
thousandth part of a second. She would 
not believe there were such a measura- 
ble fraction of time if you told her. She 
just exposes the plate ; that is all. 

One day I had to get a photograph 
taken in a hurry. I marched into a 
photographer's in the Strand. There 
was first a narrow passage, hung with 
frames filled with photos of young men 
and young women looking their worst 
in their best. Then I was confronted by 
a flight of stairs which I mounted, to 
127 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

find myself in a great big room hung 
also with photographs — photographs of 
family groups, of babies in their charac- 
teristic attitudes as their mothers had 
given them to the world. Every con- 
ceivable sort of photograph was there, 
but the room, except for an American 
roll-topped desk near the window, was 
empty. 

I coughed, and the head of a young 
girl — not more than twenty years of 
age — popped up above the desk. 

"Can Mr. Robinson take my photo- 
graph this morning?" I asked. 

"Mr. Robinson is not in at present," 
she replied. 

'T rather wanted my photograph 
taken in a hurry," said I. 

"Oh, you can have it taken," said 
she. "Would you like it done at 
once ?" 

"At once, if you please," I an- 
swered. 

She rose from her seat behind the 
128 



THE FEMININE APPRECIATION 

roll-topped desk and she walked to the 
door. 

"Then will you step into the waiting- 
room?" she asked. 

I obeyed. The waiting-room had a 
mirror and a pair of brushes. When 
I thought of the families whose por- 
traits I had seen within — I refrained. 

"I shall do," said I, "as I am." 

After a few moments' delay there 
was a knock on the door. I opened it. 
There again was the little lady waiting 
for me. 

"Will you step up to the studio, 
please?" she said, and I received the 
impression from her voice of anxious 
assistants waiting in rows to receive 
me, ready to take my features and re- 
cord them upon a photographic plate 
for the benefit of posterity. 

Up into the studio, then, I went; a 

gaunt, great place with white-blinded 

windows that stared up to the dull, grey 

sky. But it was empty. I looked in 

129 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

vain for the assistants — there were 
none. And when she began to wheel 
the camera into place I stood amazed. 

"Are you the whole business of 
Robinson and Co.?" I asked. 

She smiled encouragingly. 

"Mr. Robinson is out," said she. 

*T don't believe there is a Mr. Robin- 
son," I replied. 

She laughed gleefully at that and re- 
peated that there was such a person, but 
he was out. 

"And does he leave you to the respon- 
sibility of the entire premises ?" I asked. 

"Yes," said she. 

"What do you do if any one comes 
into the portrait gallery downstairs 
while you're up here?" 

"Oh, that's all right," she replied con- 
fidently; "they don't often come." 

I let her fix that abominable instru- 
ment of torture at the back of my neck. 
Her fingers tickled me as she did it, but 
I said nothing. I was trying in my 
130 



THE FEMININE APPRECIATION 

mind to assess the value of this business 
of Mr. Robinson. It was no easy job. 
I had not got beyond single figures 
when she walked back to the camera. 

I glanced up at the leaden sky. 

"It's rather dull," said I; "what ex- 
posure are you going to give ?" 

"Oh, I think once will be enough." 

"Once what?" I asked. 

"Just once," said she. 

"But, good heavens!" I exclaimed, 
and I thought of the two-thousandth 
part of a second — "it must be one of 
something. Is it seconds or minutes or 
half-hours or what?" 

She burst out laughing. 

"I don't know what it is," she replied, 
as if it were the simplest matter in the 
world, "only Mr. Robinson says my 
once is as good as his twice." 

"Is it?" said I. "As good as his 
twice? What a splendid once it must 
be!" 

Now that is what I mean. That is 

131 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

the feminine appreciation of mathe- 
matics. I wish I had it. It may not 
be of much service on the office stool, 
but in a world of men and women it 
is invaluable. 



132 



XIII 
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 



XIII 

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 

Some things there are which you may 
count upon for ever. The fittest will al- 
ways survive, despite the million chari- 
ties to aid the incompetent ; the maternal 
instinct will always be the deepest hu- 
man incentive, no matter who may gibe 
at the sentiment which clings about lit- 
tle children. 

Now, if it be true that Art is the 
voice of the Age in which we live ; that 
the painter paints what the eye of the 
Age has seen, the singer sings the songs 
which the Age has heard, the man of 
letters writes the thoughts which have 
passed through the mind of the Age 
— if all this is true, then how strange 
and unreal an Age this must be. 

135 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

For if for one moment you chose 
to consider it, there are but few 
painters, few singers, few writers who 
express the immutable laws of life. 
Among writers most of all, perhaps, 
this is an age which devotes itself to 
the unfittest. The physically unfit, the 
morally unfit, the socially unfit — these 
are the characters which fill the pages 
of those who write to-day. 

The old hero, the man of great 
strength, of great honour, of great 
courage, he no longer exists in litera- 
ture. I am told he is old-fashioned, 
a copy-book individual, a puppet set in 
motion with no subtle movements of 
character, but with wires too plainly 
seen, worked by a hand too obviously 
visible. There is no Art in him, I am 
told. I am glad there is not. He would 
lose all the qualities of heroship for me 
if there were. 

In times gone by, though, this old- 
fashioned hero was just as real a man 
136 



THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 

as is the hero of to-day. In times gone 
by this hero was not unnatural, not 
wanting in character or humanity when 
he slept with the maid of his choice, a 
naked sword between them guarding 
the pricelessness of her virginity. But 
now — to-day — how wanting in charac- 
ter do you imagine would he be thought 
for such a deed as that ? How painfully 
unreal ? 

Is this the fault of the Age? Or is 
it the fault of the writer ? Is it that the 
Age cannot produce a real hero ? Or is 
it that he is there in numbers in the 
midst of us and the man of letters has 
not the clearness of vision to see him ? 
For it is not the fittest, but the unfittest 
who survives in the pages of literature 
now. 

And thus it is also when you find 
treatment in fiction of that immutable 
law, the maternal instinct. If in the 
novel of to-day you meet the character 
of a woman with a child, you may be 

137 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

fairly confident that it will be shown 
to you sooner or later in the ensuing 
pages how easily she will desert it for 
the love of some man other than her 
husband, or how, loving that man, her 
soul will be wracked ere she bids it 
farewell. But, tortured or not, she will 
go. No matter how skilfully she is 
shown to repent of it later, still she will 

go- 
Now, is that the fault of the Age, 

or is it the fault of the writer? In 
danger or in love, do women desert 
their children? It may happen that 
they do, but that is a very different 
matter. All that glitters is not gold — 
all that happens is not real. Yet it 
seems to be the choice of the modern 
writer to seize upon these isolated hap- 
penings, give them a coating of reality, 
and offer them to the public as life. 

But life is not a narrow business 
where things just happen and that is 
all. Life is the length and breadth of 

138 



THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 

this great universe where things are, 
in relation to the whole system of suns 
and moons and stars. Now the mater- 
nal instinct is a law without which this 
wonderfully regulated system would 
shatter and crumble into a thousand lit- 
tle pieces. 

But no one extols it in this age of 
ours. Talk of it and you are dubbed 
a sentimentalist at once. Write of it 
and the cheap irony of critics is heaped 
upon you. Yet there seems no greater 
and no grander struggle to me than 
when these inevitable laws march 
through the invading army of vermin 
and of parasites to their inevitable end 
of victory. 

The other day I witnessed a most 
thrilling spectacle : a mother defending 
her child from death— a duel where the 
odds against victory were legion. 

In the hedge that shields my garden 
from the road there is a thrush's nest. 
I saw her build it. She was very doubt- 

139 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

f ul about me at first ; played all sorts of 
tricks to deceive me ; decoyed my atten- 
tion away while her mate was a-build- 
ing; sent him to distract my mind while 
she was putting those finishing touches 
to the house of which only a woman 
knows the secret — and knows it so well. 

I think before it was completed she 
had lost much of her distrust in me, for 
I did nothing to disturb her. It was not 
in my mind to see what she would do if 
things happened. I just wanted every- 
thing to be — that was all. And so, after 
a time, she would hop about the lawn 
where I was sitting, taking me silently 
thereby into her confidence, making me 
feel that I was not such an outcast of 
Nature as she had supposed me to be 
at first. 

I tried to live up to that as well as 
I could. Whenever I passed the nest 
and saw her uplifted beak, her two 
watchful eyes gazing alert over the 
rim of it, I assumed ignorance at the 
140 



THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 

expense of her thinking what an un- 
observant fool I must be. But there 
were always moments when she was 
away from home and I, stealing to the 
nest, found opportunity for discovering 
how things were going on. Five fine 
blue eggs were laid at last. I think she 
must have guessed that I counted them, 
for one morning she caught me with my 
hand in the nest. I slunk away feeling 
a sorry sort of fool for my clumsy inter- 
ference. She flew at once to see what 
I had done. I guess the terror that must 
have filled her heart. But when she had 
counted them herself and found her 
house in order, she came out on to the 
lawn and looked at me as though I were 
one of those strange enigmas which 
life sometimes offers to every one 
of us. 

At length one day, when I called 

and gently put in my hand — leaving 

my card, as you might say — the eggs 

were there no longer. In place of them 

141 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

was a soft, warm mass like a heap of 
swan's-down, palpitating with life. 

I met her later on the lawn, when 
she perked her head up at me and as 
good as said: 

"I suppose you know I've got other 
things to do now, besides looking beau- 
tiful." 

But I thought she looked splendid. 
What is more, I told her so, and it 
seemed just for the moment as if she 
understood, as if there came back into 
her eyes that look of grateful vanity 
which she wore last spring when her 
mate was wooing her with his songs 
from the elm tree across the way. But 
the next moment she had put all flattery 
behind her and was haggling with a 
worm, not as to price no doubt, but hag- 
gling nevertheless for possession. 

Well, the household went on splen- 
didly, until one day I saw my cat sitting 
on the path below the nest staring up 
into the bushes. 

142 



THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 

"You little devil !" I shouted, and she 
went galloping down the garden with a 
stone trundling at her heels. 

I kept a closer watch after that and, 
one morning, hearing a great noise as of 
the songs of many birds while I was at 
my breakfast, I just stepped out to see 
what was happening. 

I was held spellbound by what I saw. 
For there, on the path again below the 
nest, sat the cat and two yards from her 
— scarcely more — stood my little 
mother-thrush, her eyes dilated with 
terror, her feathers ruffled and swelling 
on her throat, singing — singing — sing- 
ing, as though her heart would burst. 

It can only last a moment, I thought. 
One spring and the cat will have her. 
But, no! Before the greatness of that 
courage, before the glory of that song, 
the cat was silenced and made impotent 
to move. There, within a few feet of 
her was her prey. With one swift rush, 
with one fell stroke of her velvet paw, 

H3 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

she could have laid it low. But she was 
up against a law greater than that which 
nerves the hunter to his cunning. 

For five minutes, with throat swell- 
ing and eyes like little pins of fire, the 
mother sang her song of fearless mater- 
nity. The glorious notes rang from her 
in ceaseless trills and tireless cadences. 
I have heard a singer at Covent Gar- 
den, when the whole house rose as one 
person and applauded her to the very 
roof, but never have I heard such a song 
as this, which put to silence the very 
laws of God that His greatest law might 
triumph. 

For five minutes she sang and then, 
with crouching steps, the cat turned tail 
and crawled away into the garden. The 
thrush ceased her singing and fluttered 
exhausted up to the nest. 

And they write of women deserting 
their children ! 



144 



XIV 
FROM MY PORTFOLIO 



XIV 

FROM MY PORTFOLIO 

He has just reached his eightieth year. 
Eighty times — not conscious perhaps of 
them all — he has seen the wall-flowers 
blossom in his old garden; well-nigh 
eighty times has he thinned out his let- 
tuces and his spring onions, pruned his 
few rose trees, weeded his gravel paths. 
Now he is bent with rheumatism; 
his rounded back and stooping head, 
his tremulous knees in their old cordu- 
roy breeches, are but sorry promises of 
what he was. Yet with what I have 
been told and what I can easily imagine, 
it is plainly that I can see the fine stal- 
wart fellow he has been. Until the age 
of seventy-two he was the carrier for 
our village. How many journeys he 
made, fair weather or foul, always up 

147 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

to the stroke of time, never forgetting 
the message for this person, the pur- 
chase for that, they will all tell you here 
in the village. I know nothing of his 
life as a carrier. It is of an old man I 
give you my picture — an old man await- 
ing the coming of death with a clear 
eye and a sturdy heart, enjoying the 
last moments of life while he may, and 
facing those sorrows and deprivations 
which come with old age in a way that 
many a younger man might learn and 
profit from. 

Only a short time since, his wife de- 
parted upon her last journey. The 
winter came and snatched her from 
him just as the first frost nips the last 
of the autumn flowers. Her frail white 
petals drooped and then they fell. He 
was left to press them between the 
leaves of that book of Life which, with 
trembling fingers, he still clutched with- 
in his hand. 

He was too ill to follow her body 
148 



FROM MY PORTFOLIO 

to its quiet little bed in that corner of 
God's acre where it was made; but 
I can feel the loneliness in the heart of 
him when he turned and turned with 
wakeful eyes that night, stretching out 
his knotted fingers to the empty place 
beside him — the place in that bed which 
had been hers for so many happy years 
and was hers no longer. 

They thought he would never pull 
through that winter after his loss; and 
indeed he must have fought manfully 
with that undaunted courage of a man 
who clings to life, no matter what mis- 
fortune, because it is his right — his heri- 
tage. For imagine the long, sleepless 
nights which must have followed the 
departure of his gentle bed-fellow! 
Think of those weary, endless silences 
which once had been filled by the whis- 
perings of their voices ! For in bed and 
at night-time, the old people always 
whisper. It is as though they were 
deeply conscious of the invisible pres- 

149. 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

ence of God and His angels. They talk 
in hushed voices as though they were 
in church. 

I can hear her saying — 

"John." 

"Yes," I can hear him reply. 

"Are you awake?" 

"Yes — are you?" 

"lam. Isn't it a windy night?" 

" Tis a fine storm — and I never put 
in they pea-sticks. I was going to do 'en 
to-morrow." 

And then I can hear her little whisper 
of consolation — 

"Maybe they'll be safe till then. 
They're sturdy plants." At which I can 
see him turning over in his bed and 
passing into one of those short hours of 
sleep into which Nature so gently di- 
vides the night for the old people. 

Then think of the long and weary 

silences through which he must have 

endured before he grew accustomed to 

the absence of his bed-fellow. For 

150 



FROM MY PORTFOLIO 

there seem to me few things more 
pathetic yet more beautiful than two 
old people who have long passed the 
passions of youth, sharing their bed 
together, with the simplicity and inno- 
cence of little children. I can, too, so 
readily conceive how dread the terror 
of the night becomes when one of them 
is taken and the other left. I can hear 
the sounds at night that frighten, the 
storms that rattle the tiles on the old 
roof making the one who is left behind 
stretch out his groping hand for the 
trembling touch of another hand in vain. 

Yet through all this he survived. 
Cruelly though his heart had been 
dealt with, he still retained the whole 
spirit of courage in his soul. With all 
its chill winds and bitter frosts, he 
braved out that winter and two years 
have passed now since his wife died. 

I see him nearly every day in his 
garden, walking up and down the paths, 
picking out a weed here, a weed there. 

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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Two walking-sticks he has to help him 
on his journeys. They are called 
simply, number one and number two. 
And when it is a fine morning, with the 
sun riding fiercely in a cloudless sky, his 
daughter will say to him — 

"You need only take number one to- 
day." 

So he takes number one and a look 
comes into those child's eyes of his as 
though he would say — 

"Ah — you see I'm not done for yet. 
There's many an old fellow of eighty 
can't get along without two sticks to 
help him." 

One day, too, this summer, I found 
him working with a bill-hook in his gar- 
den. The grass had grown up high 
under the quick-set hedge on one of the 
paths. He was clearing it all away. 

"Must keep the little place tidy, sir," 

he said, with a bright twinkle in his eye. 

"They grasses do grow up so quick 

there'd be no seeing the path at all." 

152 



FROM MY PORTFOLIO 

Then with Httle suppressed grunts of his 
breath to every swing of the bill-hook, 
he went on steadily with his work, lean- 
ing heavily upon number one with the 
other hand. 

Rather strenuous labour you would 
think for an old man of eighty to be 
doing. But as he worked, I saw that 
all the stems of the grass had been cut 
for him beforehand with a scythe. He 
was only sweeping it together into heaps 
with the aid of a bill-hook. So long as it 
was a bill-hook it seemed man's labour 
to him. 

I try sometimes to find out what he 
thinks about life and its swiftly ap- 
proaching end. But he is very reticent 
to speak of it — so unlike our little serv- 
ing-maid, who takes her evenings out 
alone, and when I asked her why she did 
not prefer company, replied — 

*T like to think, sir." 

"What of?" said I. 

"Of life and the night," said she. 

153 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

But if he thinks of life and the night, 
as indeed I am sure he must, he tells 
his thoughts to no one. It was only 
once, when I was praising the scent and 
the show of his glorious wall-flowers, 
that he said to me — 

"I like to think they're the best this 
year that I've ever had. I grow them all 
from our own seed, sir. I save it up 
myself every year. And I like to think 
this year that they're the very best, be- 
cause you know, sir, I may not see them 
again." 

I tried to imagine what would be the 
state of my own mind, if I thought I 
should never see wall-flowers again. I 
wondered could I say it with such cour- 
age, such resignation as he. 

To never see wall-flowers again! It 
seems in a nonsensical, childish way to 
me to sum up the whole tragedy — if 
tragedy there really be — in Death. It 
seems, moreover, to give just that little 
stroke of the brush, that little line of the 

154 



FROM MY PORTFOLIO 

pen in completion of this thumb-nail 
portrait of mine. An old man in an old 
garden that he loves, telling himself that 
his wall-flowers are the best that year of 
all — telling himself bravely night after 
night when he goes to bed, morning 
after morning when he rises to the new 
day — which is one more day nearer the 
end — telling himself that they are the 
best this year of all, because he may not 
see them any more. 
To never see wall-flowers again ! 



^5^ 



XV 

AN OLD STRING BONNET 



XV 

AN OLD STRING BONNET 

I CARE not what it is, so long as it be old ; 
but if an object has passed through 
other hands than mine, it gathers an in- 
definable charm about it. Old china, 
old cups and saucers, whether they be 
ugly or beautiful, are priceless by rea- 
son of that faint murmuring of other 
lives which clings around them. In the 
mere tinkling of the china as it is 
brought in upon the tray, I can hear a 
thousand conversations and gossipings 
coming dimly to my ears out of the 
wealth of years which is heaped upon 
them. 

For this reason would I always use 
the old china which it is my good for- 
tune to possess. A breakfast-table, a 

159 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

tea-table spread with china which can 
tell you nothing than that it has but 
lately come from the grimy potteries, 
makes poor company to sit down with. 
Yet let it be but Spode, or Worcester, or 
Lowestoft, and every silence that falls 
upon you is filled with the whisperings 
of these priceless companions. 

I have no sympathy with the collector 
who locks his china away because it is 
rare and worth so much in pounds and 
shillings and pence. He is no more than 
a gaoler, incarcerating in an 'eternal 
prison the very best friends he has, and 
just, if you please, because they are his. 

What if there is the risk of their being 
broken ! A rivet here, a rivet there will 
make them speak again. I have a Spode 
milk-jug with forty-five rivets in it and 
it is more eloquent to me than all the 
modern china you could find, however 
perfect it may be. In fact, I would 
sooner have a piece that has been 
mended. It shows that in those long- 
i6o 



AN OLD STRING BONNET 

ago days, where all romance lies hiding 
for us now, it shows that they cared for 
their treasures and would not let them 
be discarded because they happened 
upon evil times. I have also an old blue 
and white tea-pot with a silver spout. 
A dealer sniffed at it the other day. 

"May have been good once," said he. 

" Tis better now," said I. "So would 
you and I be if we'd been through the 
wars." 

"Do you mean to say you'd prefer me 
with a wooden arm ?" he asked. 

"I would," said I. "You'd be a better 
man. You couldn't grasp so much." 

But the other day I found a treasure. 

Miss B , the old spinster lady in 

whose farm I have my little dwelling, is 
by way of being the reincarnation of a 
jackdaw. She has cupboards and chests 
in every room in which lie hidden a 
thousand old things which have been in 
her family for years. Yesterday, in 
turning out an old drawer, I came across 
i6i 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

a quaint little contrivance that looked 
like a string bag, only it was beautifully 
made in three parts, all composed of a 
wonderful lace-work of fine string and 
knitted together, each one by a delicate 
stitching of white horsehair. 

I brought it out into the kitchen, ten- 
derly in my hand. 

"Whatever is this?" I asked. 

She took it in her fingers and looked 
at it for a moment, then, inconsequently, 
she laid it down upon the kitchen table. 

"That — " said she, "that was my 
great, great grandmother's bonnet. She 
wore it up till the time she died." 

"Why, it's nearly two hundred years 
old !" I exclaimed. 

"If it's a day," said she. 

I gazed at it for some moments. Then 
suddenly it seemed to move, to raise 
itself from the table. Another instant 
and it was spread out, decked with a 
tiny piece of pink ribbon, on the head 
of an old lady — but oh, so old! Her 
162 



AN OLD STRING BONNET 

silvery white hair thrust out in little 
curls and coils through the mesh of the 
string, and there she was, with a great 
broad skirt and big puff sleeves bobbing 
me a curtsey before my very eyes. 

I turned to Miss B 

"Do you see?" I asked. 

"See what?" said she. 

"Your great, great grandmother." 

"I never saw her in my life," she re- 
plied. 

"But under the string bonnet !" I ex- 
claimed. 

"Goodness ! That 'ud fall to pieces if 
any one tried to put it on now. It's no 
good to me. You can have it if you 
like." 

Then I understood why she could not 
see her great, great grandmother, and, 
with a feeling of compassion for her 
loneliness, I took the old lady into my 

arms. Miss B went to the sink to 

peel some potatoes. 

"You're perfectly beautiful," I whis- 
163 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

pered, and her old face wrinkled all over 
with smiles. 

"They used to tell me that when I was 
a girl," said she. 

"You're more beautiful now," said I. 

"What's that you're saying?" asked 
Miss B over her shoulder. 

"What I should have said," said I, "if 
I'd lived two hundred years ago." 



164 



XVI 
THE NEW MALADY 



XVI 

THE NEW MALADY 

In every age there is a new disease — 
there is a new malady — a strange sick- 
ness. The whole army of medical sci- 
ence goes out to meet it and there is 
pitched a battle wherein lives are sacri- 
ficed, honour made and lost. But in the 
end the glorious banner of medical skill 
is generally carried triumphant from 
the field. Some old foes truly there are 
who are not conquered yet, with whom 
a guerilla warfare is continuously being 
waged. Never can they be brought into 
the open field; never can they be come 
upon at close quarters. Sometimes in a 
skirmish they are routed and put to 
flight; yet ever they return, lessened 
in numbers, no doubt, weakened in 
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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

strength, but still a marauding enemy 
to mankind. 

Then apart from these, there is that 
new malady, which, with its stern in- 
evitability, the age always brings amidst 
its retinue of civilisation. 

It would seem, notwithstanding the 
dictum of the Bab Ballad-maker, that 
they are not always blessings which fol- 
low in Civilisation's train. One disease 
after another has come amongst us from 
out the ranks of civilisation. And now 
appears the latest of all, seizing upon 
its victims under the very walls of that 
fortress of medical science. 

It is the disease of bearing children, 
the disease of making life. 

We all know how science with its 
anaesthetics, with its deftly made instru- 
ments and its consummate skill, is at- 
tacking the enemy from every quarter. 
Yet the fatality of the sickness is stead- 
ily growing. More women die in child- 
birth now than ever fell its victims in 
i68 



THE NEW MALADY 

the days when the services of a common 
mid-wife were all that were at their dis- 
posal. 

It is terrible sometimes to think how 
rapidly this most natural of all func- 
tions — since upon it hangs the existence 
of all people in the world — it is terrible 
to think how rapidly it is shaping into 
the awesome features of a disease. 
Women are as ashamed of its conditions 
now as they would be if smallpox had 
pitted their delicate skins. They speak 
of it as of some dreadful operation — 
which indeed it has become — and, in- 
stead of glorying over a possession 
which they alone command, they will 
talk of it as a curse which, suffering- 
alone, they should be given compensa- 
tion for. They ask for the vote ! Great 
God ! As if the vote could compensate 
them for the loss of bearing children as 
the God of nature meant they should be 
borne ! As if any form of compensation 
could ease such a loss as that ! 
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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Success and civilisation — these are 
the two subtle poisons from the effects 
of which we are all suffering. Nothing 
fails like success! Nothing degrades 
so much as civilisation ! 

A little while ago a woman who had 
given birth to a fine child told me quite 
frankly that she herself was not going 
to feed it. 

*'Do you mean suckle it ?" said I. 

She did not like that word and she 
shuddered. 

"You object to the use of the word?" 
I suggested. 

"Is it qtiite nice?" she asked. 

I shrugged my shoulders. 

"Words are only ugly," said I, "when 
they express ugly deeds. I can under- 
stand if you find the deed ugly you don't 
like the word." 

She answered that she did not mind 

the thing itself. "You see," said she, 

"it's quite impossible for me to do it. 

We've been asked up — my husband and 

170 



THE NEW MALADY 

I — to Chatsworth to meet the King, and 
it would be foolish to lose such an op- 
portunity — wouldn't it? I can't go up 
like this, so I must have a sort of op- 
eration." 

"So you've made up your mind?" 
said I. 

She screwed up her eyes as her con- 
science faltered in her breast. 

"Practically," she replied. 

"Well, if not quite," I suggested, 
"write to the King, and ask him whether 
he would sooner meet you at Chats- 
worth or have a stalwart son given to 
the country." 

She told me I made the most absurd 
remarks she had ever heard from any 
one and she walked away. "Besides," 
said she, over her shoulder, "it's a 
daughter." 

I found her name amongst those in- 
vited to Chatsworth to meet the King. 
I saw her picture in a photograph of the 
Chatsworth group and she looked beau- 
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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

tiful. Her figure was that of a child 
who had never known maternity. 

There are traitors even in the camp 
of medical science, thought I. Nothing 
degrades science so much as the march 
of civilisation — no social woman fails 
so utterly as when she succeeds in meet- 
ing the King. 

I have a friend, in the tiny chintz 
parlour of whose cottage in the country 
a certain collection of prints adorn the 
walls. For the most part they are steel 
engravings, valuable enough in their 
way. But it is the subject common to 
them all, rather than the intrinsic value 
of each picture, which has persuaded 
my friend to their collection. One and 
all, with the tenderest treatment you can 
imagine, they portray a baby feeding at 
the gentle breast of its mother. No 
other pictures in the room are there but 
these, and there must at least be a fair 
dozen of them. You cannot fail but 
notice them. The similarity of their 
172 



THE NEW MALADY 

subject alone would force itself upon 
your mind. 

Yet, would you believe it, the ladies 
who come there to call upon my friend's 
wife, regard them with horror and 
alarm. As their eyes fall upon them, 
they turn sharply away, only to be met 
with yet another of those improper pic- 
tures upon an opposite wall. With far 
greater equanimity and even interest 
would they look upon a series of Ho- 
garth's prints. The vicar of the parish, 
too, was alarmed. He asked my friend 
whether he did not think that such pic- 
tures did harm. 

"Of course I know," said he, "it is 
a natural function and is all right in its 
proper place. I don't mean to say that 
it would do harm to you or to me, of 
course — we're old enough to discrim- 
inate. But younger people are apt to 
look at these things in a different light." 

"Do you know that as a fact?" asked 
my friend quietly. 

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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Now, the vicar was a truthful man, 
who had read that the devil is the father 
of all liars. He held his head thought- 
fully for a moment. 

"It is what I imagine would be the 
case," said he. "On which account I 
always disapprove of those pictures 
which, what you might say, expose the 
body of a woman in the so-called inter- 
ests of Art. With a man and his wife — 
if I may say so — such things are differ- 
ent; but to make a show of a woman's 
nakedness, that is to me a form of pros- 
titution at which honestly I shudder 
every time it comes my way." 

"I see — I see your point," said my 
friend. "H there is to be prostitution, 
let it be that of the wife. I see your 
point. But why call marriage a sacra- 
ment? And why solemnise it in a 
church? I should have thought the 
meat-market had been a better place." 

Great heavens! No wonder the dis- 
ease is spreading ! No wonder is it that 
174 



THE NEW MALADY 

women approach the hour of deliver- 
ance in fear and trembling, for neither 
do they fit themselves for it, nor are 
they proud of the birthright which is 
theirs alone. For the sake of appear- 
ances, because they are not well enough 
off, because of inconvenience, they will 
give up all they possess for the mess 
of pottage. Civilisation indeed has 
made a strange place of the world. 
There are few men and women left in 
it now. 

Now and again you may run across 
a true mother, but all the rest of women 
that you meet are only fit to be called 
by a name that is indeed too ugly to 
write. 

A true woman I heard of only the 
other day. She was brought to her bed 
of childbirth. In the room there was 
that still hush, the hush of awe when 
out of the "nowhere into here" the 
something which is life is about to be 
conjured out of the void of nothingness 
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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

which is death. For long, trembling 
moments all was still. The faint whis- 
pers and muffled sounds only made the 
quietness yet more potent. And then, 
suddenly, out of the silence, came the 
shrill living, trumpet-cry of a new voice 
— the voice of a little child. 

The woman stretched her arms and 
smiled, as if in that cry she had heard 
the voice of God. 

''You must lie still," they whispered 
in her ear — "there is yet another child." 

"Thank God!" she moaned, and the 
silence fell round them once more. 



176 



XVII 

BELLWATTLE AND THE DIG- 
NITY OF MEN 



XVII 

BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN 

We were all sitting out in the garden 
having tea under the nut-trees — Bell- 
wattle, Cruikshank and I. They use the 
old Spode tea-service — apple green and 
gold and black — whenever tea is taken 
out of doors, and I would give anything 
to describe to you the pictures that rise 
in my mind with the sight of that quaint 
old tea-service, the smell of the sweet- 
briars and the scent of the stocks. They 
are indescribable those pictures. No 
one will ever paint them to my satis- 
faction, neither with colours nor with 
words. They are composed with such 
historical accuracy, are so redolent of 
their time, that it would need somebody 
with a memory reaching over one hun- 
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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

dred and fifty years to trace them as 
they appear to me. Now, if my memory 
reaches over five minutes it is doing 
well — and many there are the same as 
I. 

The characters I see are arrayed 
in costumes so befitting to their 
period, they speak of things so faith- 
ful to their day, that no man, unless 
he had lived in the eighteenth century, 
could possibly reproduce them. I see 
their dainty costumes — I hear their 
quaint speech, but not one jot or one 
tittle of it all could I put down upon 
paper. Yet I know those pictures are 
true as true can be. 

Why is this? Is there a memory 
within us which harks back to lives 
we have lived before ? Is it by the same 
reason we feel that certain incidents 
have come to us again out of the far-off 
past? I was pondering over it all that 
afternoon, when suddenly Bellwattle 
broke the silence which surrounded us. 
i8o 



BELLWATTLE 

"Why were elephants called ele- 
phants ?" she asked. 

Cruikshank — of whom, if it cannot 
be said that he knows the woman in 
his wife, at least knows her queer little 
habits — passed his cup without amaze- 
ment for more tea. But I — well, it took 
my breath away. 

"Whatever made you ask that?" I 
inquired. 

She shrugged her shoulders as 
eloquently as she could, being occu- 
pied with Cruikshank's third cup of 
tea. 

"I don't know," she replied— "Who 
called them elephants, anyhow ?" 

To this second question, Cruikshank 
was as ready as if he were at Sunday 
school. 

"Adam," said he. "Adam named 
all the beasts and he called them 
elephants." 

"But why elephants?" asked Bell- 
wattle. 

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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Cruikshank looked at me across the 
little garden table. There was an ap- 
peal in his eyes, as though he would 
say, "Go on — I've answered mine. It's 
your turn now. Don't let her think we 
don't know." 

For you must understand that, in 
their dealings with women, there is a 
certain freemasonry amongst men. 
If by nature their sex is debarred from 
the greatest of all functions, they must 
at least steal dignity by the assumption 
of great wisdom. No man may ever 
admit ignorance to a woman. So long 
as her questions have nothing to do with 
instinct, he will answer them, whether 
or no he tells her the greatest balder- 
dash you ever heard. All men in 
their vows of masonry must swear to 
do this. We should be in a sorry way 
if women did not look up to us for 
knowledge. 

When then I received this secret sign 
from Cruikshank, I did the best thing 
182 



BELLWATTLE 

I could for the sex — I answered at a 
hazard. 

"He called it an elephant," said I, 
^'because the impression he received 
of its size may have suggested that 
word to his mind. He may for example 
have been trodden upon by one of those 
huge brutes — in which case," said I, 
"the impression would have been a vivid 
one." 

"H one of them trod on me, it 
wouldn't suggest the word elephant," 
said Bellwattle. "I should think of 
squash." 

"Probably you would," said Cruik- 
shank; "but then you're not Adam." 
By which I think he meant to convey 
the mental superiority of his sex. 

Therefore — "She might be Eve," 
said I. 

Bellwattle closed one eye and looked 
at me. 

I met her gaze steadily and then, as 
suddenly, she put another question to us. 

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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"Did Adam name everything?" 

"Every single thing," said Cruik- 
shank. 

"All the insects?" 

"Every blessed one." 

"Why did he call it Daddy Long Legs, 
then?" 

Cruikshank seized the opportunity. 

"That was v^hat its long legs sug- 
gested to him." 

"But why Daddy?" said Bellwattle 
very quickly. 

Cruikshank dipped into his third cup 
of tea, drowning all possible answer. 

"Why Daddy?" she repeated. 

"Because," said I, "Adam was the 
father of all living." 

For the moment Cruikshank forgot 
his table manners and choked. It took 
a great deal of serious assurance on 
our part then to convince Bellwattle 
that we were in earnest. For we were 
in earnest. No man is so serious, or 
so put upon his mettle as when a woman 
bows to him for knowledge. There 
184 



BELLWATTLE 

comes that look into his face as well I 
remember would creep into the face of 
the master when I was at school. No 
doubt it is the same now. The vanity 
of men does not alter in ten years, or in 
ten thousand for that matter. 

I can see now the German master 
— that is to say the stolid Englishman 
who taught us German — I can see him 
now reading out a sentence for us to 
translate into the language. 

"My heart," read he, most solemnly, 
"my heart is in the Highlands — my 
heart is not here." 

And there was such pathos, such a 
tone of exile in his voice, that I was 
prompted to ask him whether, under the 
circumstances, he could give his proper 
attention to the class. 

"Might we not shut up our books," 
said I — "straight away ?" 

The look that came into his face then 
was the look — exaggerated a little per- 
haps — which comes into the faces of 
185 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

most men when the dignity of their 
great wisdom is upset. Cruikshank and 
I, then, were strugghng for our dignity 
against the fire of Bellwattle's ques- 
tions. It was no good talking about 
the evolution of language to her. She 
would never have understood a word of 
it. Now, when a man tells a woman 
anything which she does not under- 
stand, she is just as likely to think him a 
consummate fool. And a man will al- 
ways be a fool rather than be thought 
one. 

We were trying, therefore, to answer 
Bellwattle as she would have answered 
herself. In other words, we were mak- 
ing fools of ourselves in order that Bell- 
wattle should think us wise. 

It was here that Cruikshank tempted 
providence. Doubtless he thought we 
were getting on so well that we could 
afford to be generous with our infor- 
mation, for in quite an uncalled-for way 
he volunteered to tell her more. 
i86 



BELLWATTLE 

"Is there anything else," said he, 
"that you want to know?" 

She nodded her head and around the 
corners of her lips I believe I caught 
the suspicion of a smile. 

"If Adam called it a cow," she be- 
gan " 

"He did," interrupted Cruikshank. 
"In those days it probably made that 
sort of noise." 

"Then why," said Bellwattle, giving 
him never a moment to retract, "why do 
they call it a vache in France ?" 

We all looked at each other — I at 
Cruikshank, Cruikshank at me, and 
Bellwattle alternately at both of us. 

After a pregnant pause, Cruikshank 
began to temporise. 

"That's very like a woman," said he 
— "you're going into another issue al- 
together." 

"Now," said I, "you're coming to 
Bible history." 

"Yes, that's Bible history," repeated 
187 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Cruikshank, "you're going back to the 
Tower of Babel." 

"Is that where they wanted to get 
up to Heaven?" she asked. 

We nodded our heads emphatically. 

"And it all smashed up, and they be- 
gan talking like a crowd of tourists?" 

"Something like that," we agreed. 

"Then, don't you see," went on 
Cruikshank, finding his feet once more. 
"Then they all separated, went into dif- 
ferent countries, and when they saw a 
cow in France they called it vache — it's 
quite simple." 

"Oh, yes, I see that part of it," said 
Bell wattle. You have only to say to a 
woman — and moreover be it in the 
proper tone of voice — that a thing is 
quite simple and she will see it through 
and through. I have known Bellwattle 
understand a proposition of Euclid by 
telling her it was quite simple. 

As I say, "If that point is the centre 
of this circle, all lines drawn from that 



BELLWATTLE 

point to the circumference must be 
equal; that's quite simple, isn't it?" 

And she has replied, "Oh — quite — I 
see that — but who says it's the centre?" 

If I say Euclid, she then asks me if 
I believe everything which people tell 
me. 

In this manner she saw Cruikshank's 
point about the people in France calling 
a cow vache. But after seeing it, she 
was silent for a long time. She was 
giving it due consideration. I knew that 
another question was to come. At last 
she looked up. 

"But can you explain," said she, 
"how they happened to hit upon the 
same animal? I know vache means 
cow, but how did the people in France 
know that it should be that particular 
animal that they were to call vache? 
They might have called a pig vache, 
and then we should all have been topsy- 
turvy." 

I ran my fingers through my hair. 
189 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

'My God!" said I 



"It's no good swearing," said 
Bellwattle, "I can see you don't 
know." 



190 



XVIII 
THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 



XVIII 

THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 

It COMES back into my mind now, as an 
echo that is lost among the hills, that 
night in Ardmore in Ireland, that night 
when they heard the Pope was dead. 
I can hear the low, deep note of the sea, 
monotonous and even as the beating of 
a heavy drum when the waves rolled 
up the boat cove, or leapt upon the rocks 
that crouch to meet the sea beneath the 
Holy Well. I can see the clouds, great 
banks of grey, as though a furnace 
were smouldering below the horizon, I 
can see them hanging in sullen wet 
masses, hanging low over the white 
crests that were breaking away by 
Helvic Head. I can see the dank, dark 
coils of seaweed lying, like the hair of 

193 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

women that are drowned, along the dim 
curved Hne of the strand. And around 
the first head, where the bay spreads 
wide into the great Atlantic, the sound 
of a rushing wind, muted by the hills, 
dimly reaches my ears. 

It seems fitting that when any great 
catastrophe falls upon the trembling 
little people of this world there should 
be sounded an ominous note — a discord 
struck upon that great orchestra of the 
elements. It is the only true accom- 
paniment to the sorrows of mankind, 
when the thunder bursts, the lightning 
rends the raiment of the sky and the 
winds play wildly on their shrillest in- 
struments. 

There was no thunder, no lightning 
that night, but all across the bay and 
round the headlands you might have 
felt the despairing sense of foreboding, 
the heavy hour before a storm, when 
the very ground seems angry beneath 
your feet. 

194 



THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 

Such was the night in Ardmore when 
they heard the Pope was dead. 

In one moment the whole Roman 
CathoHc world had been robbed of its 
father ; the great Church of Christ was 
without its head on earth. From that 
moment and for the anxious days to 
come they were as orphans, knowing 
not where to turn. The Pope was dead. 
But there was none to cry in the 
market-place, there was none to stand 
upon the chapel steps and shout, "Long 
live the Pope !" 

The Pope was dead. There was no 
Pope. 

You must have seen the silent, ques- 
tioning faces to have known what 
such a loss could mean. Around 
the counters in the public-houses the 
fishermen sat, afraid to drink. The 
women crept into their cottages and 
shut the doors. Presently little flick- 
ers of light glowed from each win- 
dow — candle flames trembling as the 

195 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

draughts of wind caught their feeble 
glow. 

It was as though the spirit of that 
old aristocrat, with his death-like head 
and piercing eyes, were making its way 
to Heaven through the little street of 
Ardmore, and these few feeble glim- 
mers were set out, tiny beacons, to point 
his road. 

For an hour they were burning be- 
fore there came from the village court- 
house the sounds of instruments being 
blown, all those weird, unearthly noises 
which tell you that a village band is 
about to play. 

In ten minutes they were ready — 
the public-houses were empty. In ten 
minutes they were putting their instru- 
ments to their lips; their cheeks were 
swelling with the first ready breath to 
start. A little crowd of boys and 
girls were surrounding them ready to 
march by their sides; and then, with 
a one — two — three, they began. The 
196 



THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 

little solemn, serious crowd strode 
forth. 

Up by the post-office they went, round 
by the Protestant Church, along down 
Coffee Lane to where stands the sea- 
wall hung with its festoons of red- 
brown nets. Then through the main 
street they marched and round again 
the same route as before. 

And ever as they marched, like the 
band of an army playing the death 
march at the funeral of their chief, they 
played the same grim tune — the grim- 
mest tune at such a time I think I have 
ever heard — "Good-bye, Dolly, I must 
leave you." It was the only tune they 
knew. 

After the second round of their 
journey, the playing ceased while the 
players gained their breath. In silence 
then, they tramped over the same 
ground, the little crowd, eager for the 
music again, still following at their 
heels. 

197 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

When they reached the top of Coffee 
Lane once more, where the road runs 
up to meet the Holy Well and wanders 
from there in a thin straggling path 
around the wild cliff-heads, there came 
an elderly woman and a child out of the 
darkness. 

Seven miles they had walked around 
that dangerous path from the little 
fishing hamlet of Whiting Bay — seven 
miles over a way where a goat must 
choose its steps, where at moments the 
sheer cliff rushes down four hundred 
feet to meet the sea — seven miles in 
that chill darkness with never a lan- 
tern's light to guide their feet — seven 
miles with hearts throbbing, hope rising 
and falling, whispering a word to each 
other now and then, always straining 
on — seven miles just to learn the truth. 

As they came out of the shadows, the 

woman stopped. The clarionet-player 

was wetting his lips, fitting his fingers 

with infinite care upon the notes of his 

198 



THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 

instrument. She caught his arm before 
he could raise it to his mouth. 

''What is ut?" she asked. 

"Shure, the Pope's dead," he whis- 
pered back. 

And then, with its one — two— three 
once more, the band struck up again. 
The woman and the child stood there 
silently under a cottage window, the 
light of the burning candle within mak- 
ing pin-points in their eyes, while in 
their ears echoed and re-echoed the 
words, "The Pope is dead," mingling 
with the refrain, "Good-bye, Dolly, I 
must leave you." 



199 



XIX 
ART 



XIX 

ART 

It was explained to me the other 
day, the meaning of this elusive little 
word of three letters. All my precon- 
ceived opinions were dashed to the 
ground and, in the space of half an 
hour, I was taught the modern apprecia- 
tion of the meaning of that word — 
Art. 

It chanced I wanted a copy of that 
picture by Furze, "Diana of the Up- 
lands" — Furze whom the gods loved 
or envied, I don't know which. I 
wanted a copy of it to hang in my bed- 
room in a little farmhouse in the 
country. I wanted to hang it near my 
bed so that when I woke of a morning, 
I could start straight away across the 
203 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Uplands, feeling the generous give of 
the heather beneath my feet, tasting the 
freshening draught of wind in my 
nostrils, taking into my limbs the energy 
of those hounds ever ready to strain 
away from their leash and leave 
their mistress a speck upon a dim 
horizon. 

It chanced that I wanted all that — 
which is not a little. But these are the 
real good things of life which are so 
seldom bought because they are so 
cheap. A small print-seller's in Regent 
Street was good enough for me. 

I walked in. On the threshold I was 
met by a little serving-maid with a 
chubby red face and a brand-new green 
apron. 

"Yes?" said she. 

It opened the conversation ex- 
cellently. 

"I want a coloured print of 'Diana 
of the Uplands,' " said I. 

She hurried to a portfolio and began 
204 



ART 

turning over coloured prints at an in- 
credible speed. Before she had found 
it, she looked up. 

"Will you have it plain?" she asked, 
"orwithaB.A.M.?" 

"A B.A.M.?" said I. I could not 
describe to you the effect of those three 
mysterious letters. It sounded almost 
improper. "You ought not to say 
things like that to me," I continued 
solemnly. "Supposing I said that you 
were a V.P.G." 

She became at a loss between con- 
fusion and amusement. 

"I forgot," she said, apologetically. 
"I'm new here, and that's what we call 
them. It means British Art Mount." 

At that moment there came another 
serving-maid in a green apron. 

"What is it you want, sir?" she 
asked. 

"Oh, I'm being attended to, thank 
you," I replied. 

"Yes, but this young lady's new to 
205 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

the shop," she said; "she's not quite 
used to serving yet." 

"She's doing very well indeed," said 
I. "She's already nearly persuaded me 
to buy a thing I don't want — a thing I 
don't even know the meaning of." 

The little girl with the chubby cheeks 
wriggled her shoulders with delight. 

"I asked him if he wanted a B.A.M.," 
she explained. 

The other looked quite shocked. 

"You know I've told you not to say 
that," she said. "You'd better go up 
to Miss Nelson, she wants you up- 
stairs." 

The little maid departed. I was left 
with her more elderly and more ex- 
perienced sister in trade. In a moment 
she had discovered the picture in ques- 
tion and had laid it out for my approval. 
I did approve; and then she asked me 
if I wanted it framed. 

"If you do framing here, I shall be 
very glad," said I. 

206 



ART 

'Then what sort of frame would you 
like ?" she asked. 

I hesitated. I was trying to see it 
in my mind's eye on that bedroom wall ; 
see it when the sun was pouring in 
through the open window; when the 
rain was pattering against the panes, 
and the sky was grey. Therefore, while 
I made up my mind — just, perhaps, to 
conceal from her the fact that I could 
be in doubt about such a matter — I 
asked her what she would suggest. 

She drew herself up, conscious of the 
state of importance which she had at- 
tained with my question. 

"Well," she said, and her head hung 
thoughtfully on one side — "that de- 
pends on what room it's for. Is it for 
the dining-room or the drawing-room ?" 

Now what possessed me, I do not 
know ; but when I thought of that little 
farmhouse in the valley between the 
Uplands, the words dining-room and 
drawing-room sounded ridiculous. There 
207 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

is just a sitting-room — and a small sit- 
ting-room — that is all. This dining- 
room and drawing-room seemed non- 
sensical, and what with one thing and 
another it put me in a nonsensical mood. 

"'Tis for the cook's bedroom," said 
I. 

If only you had seen her face! It 
fell like a stone over a cliff and, what 
is more, it never seemed to reach the 
bottom of that expression of bewilder- 
ment. 

"Oh," she replied— "I see. Well, 
then, I'm sure I couldn't advise you. 
Tastes differ — don't they?" 

"So I've heard," said I. "But I wish 
you would advise me, all the same. I'm 
quite ignorant about these things. I'm 
only a farmer. I've just come up to 
London for the day and I've been given 
this commission for — well, she's more 
than the cook — she's the housekeeper. 
She didn't tell me anything about the 
frame. What frame would you sug- 
208 



ART 

gest? I thought a nice rosewood one; 
but you know much better about these 
sort of things than I do." 

"A rosewood one won't be bad," said 
she, in a quaint little tone of voice that 
gently patronised me. "A rosewood 
one'll do," she repeated; "but it's not 
Art." 

That phrase had an electrical sound 
to me ; and when I say electrical, I mean, 
beside the shock of it, something which 
neither you nor I nor any of us under- 
stand. 

"Why isn't it Art?" I asked quickly. 
"You mustn't think me foolish," I added, 
"but really I suppose I'm what you call 
a country bumpkin; I know nothing 
about these things. Why isn't it Art?" 

"Just it isn't," she replied, and 

she took down a sample of black mould- 
ing and a sample of gold ; then she laid 
a sample of rosewood on one side of 
the picture. "There," she said, "that's 
your cook's taste." She did not quite 
209 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

like to call it mine. Then she laid the 
other two samples on the other sides 
of the print— "and that's Art." 

I looked at the picture, then I looked 
at her. Then I looked back at the pic- 
ture again. 

"But how do you know it's Art?" 
said I. 

She pulled herself up still straighter 
and she answered, with all the confi- 
dence in the world — 

"Because I've been taught — that's 
why. Because I've been educated to it. 
I haven't spent five years here amongst 
all these pictures without learning 
what's Art and what isn't." 

"And now you know?" said I. 

She nodded her head heavily with 
wisdom. 

"But are you sure you've been taught 
right?" I went on. "How are you to 
know that the people who taught you 
knew?" 

" 'Cos they've been in the business 

2IO 



ART 

all their lives," she replied. " 'Cos 
they've found out what the public like 
and they give it to them. It's like one 
person learning music on a grand piano 
and another learning music on a cheap 
cottage piano. Do you mean to tell me 
that the one as learns on the grand 
piano isn't going to be a better musician 
than the one as learns on the cottage?" 

"It's more likely that they'd be a bet- 
ter judge of pianos," said I. 

She told me I was talking silly and 
which frame would I have. 

"I'm trying not to talk silly," I assured 
her. "I mean every word I say, only I 
haven't been educated as you have. You 
must remember that, and make allow- 
ances. I only said that about the piano 
because I knew a lady who had a satin- 
wood Bliithner grand piano, and she 
never played on it from one day to 
another, so that she did not even know 
what a good piano was, and much less 
did she know about music." 

2H 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"I wish she'd give it to me," said the 
little serving-maid. 

*1 wish she would," said I; "then 
perhaps you'd admit that there was 
something in what I said, after all. But, 
joking aside, if you've been taught what 
is Art and what isn't, couldn't you teach 
me? I love the country. I think the 
fields of corn that grow up on my land 
every year are beautiful. And when I 
see them getting ripe and being 
gathered, then going out to feed the 
whole world — you here in the cities, 
who don't know the gold of a ripening 
field of corn — every single one of you, 
all fed from those wonderful fields that 
have waves like the sea when the winds 
blow across them — things like that I 
know about — thinks like that I appre- 
ciate." 

"Oh— well— that's Nature," said she. 
"We were talking about Art. Art's 
holdin' the mirror up to Nature — 
see." 

212 



ART 

"Then what's the matter with the 
mirror?" I asked. 

"What mirror?" 

"The mirror of Art?" 

"Why there's nothing the matter with 
it." 

"Well— I don't know," said I, "but it 
seems to me as if so many people have 
been taught to look into it, that it has 
become dulled with their breath and 
won't reflect anything now." 

"I don't know what you mean," she 
said. 

"I don't believe I know myself," I 
replied. "I haven't been taught like you 
have." 

"Well — which frame would you 
like?" she asked a little testily. 

"I'm afraid my housekeeper'll be 
annoyed if I don't take the rosewood 
one," said I. 



213 



XX 

THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 



XX 

THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 

"If you want to be quiet," said my 
friend, you had better go and sit up in 
the old mill." 

I acquiesced at once. 

*7ust give me a table and a chair," 
said I. "I shall be quite comfort- 
able." 

"Are you going to write?" he asked. 

I nodded my head. 

"What?" 

"An essay." 

"On what?" 

"The Value of Idleness." 

"You'll do that well," said he, and he 
told the gardener to take up to the mill 
all that I required. 

So here am I, writing the Value of 
217 



THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 

Idleness in the little oak-beamed loft 
of an old mill. 

To do nothing is to be receptive of 
everything. Idleness of the body alone 
will serve you not at all. It is only when 
the mind — but to follow the mood, to 
understand the drift of this philosophy 
of idleness, you must see, as I see it, this 
old white mill in which I sit and 
write. 

Last night, as we walked out in the 
garden, the moon was in her chariot, 
whirling in a mad race through the 
heavens. In and out of a thousand 
clouds she rode recklessly. 

She carries news, thought I, and 
were she the daughter of Nimshi, she 
could not drive more furiously. 

And there, under her shifting light, 
with great arms raised appealingly into 
the wind, stood the old wind-mill, just 
at the end of the little red-brick path 
which runs through an avenue of 
gnarled apple trees. 
218 



THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 

I touched my friend's arm and 
pointed. 

"She's very beautiful," said I. 

"She's very old," said he. 

Then I suddenly saw in her the figure 
of a patient woman, who has given up 
her youth, appealing with passionate 
arms to God to grant her rest. Another 
moment and there came a faint moan- 
ing sigh falling upon my ears — a sigh 
like the fluttering of an autumn leaf 
that eddies slowly to the ground. 

"What is that?" I asked. 

"The wind-mill," said my friend. 
"She's crying to be set free, to have 
her arms unloosed." 

As he said that, I saw her as a tired 
woman no longer. She became majestic 
in her agony then. So it seemed to me 
must the women in Siberia cry at night 
with faces turned, and hands stretched 
forth towards their native Russia. 

"How long has she been idle?" I in- 
quired. 

219 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"Oh — many, many years," said he. 

It was this which made me think o£ 
writing the Value of Idleness. So here 
am I, writing my essay on Idleness in 
the little oak-beamed loft of an old mill. 

You cannot think how silent it is. I 
feel away and above the world. From 
the wee square window between the 
beams I can see the miller's cottage with 
its broad sloping roof of old red tiles, 
leaning down until it nearly touches 
the ground. But beyond that, on one 
side, stretches the whole weald of Kent 
and, on the other, lie the Romney 
marshes spreading forth to meet the 
sea. And there is the sea — that faint, 
far margin of blue — a chaplet upon the 
smooth, broad forehead of the world. 

Yet silent and still as it all is, I can 
nevertheless hear voices. Upon the 
great oak shaft, the tireless vertebra 
of this goddess of the wind, there are 
two initials carved by some patient 
hand. L. B. are the letters cut, and 
220 



THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 

following them comes the date — 1790. 
There is a voice to be heard from that, 
if you do but listen well. I can see 
one of those young millers who, when 
never a leaf was rustling on the trees 
and the air was still in a breathless 
calm, I can see him sitting there in a 
moment of idleness, carving out his 
initials and the date in deep, bold 
characters. Then saying aloud to him- 
self, "Maybe there'll be some as'U 
read that in a hundred years, and won- 
der who be I." 

I can hear the incisions of his knife 
as he cut into the stern hard oak, the 
little silences, the little grunts of his 
breath as he laboured over each letter. 
No — for all its stillness, there are 
voices in this old mill. Up the oak 
ladder that leads through the ceiling 
to another floor I can just see the great 
heavy wheel that turned the shaft. It 
is grey even now with the dust of flour 
and, as its sharp teeth gleam down at 

221 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

me out of the darkness, the echoes of 
those rumbling sounds when the wind 
was high and the sails were racing 
round, comes faintly to my ears like 
thunder afar off. 

So here am I, in the midst of these 
silent voices of the mill — here am I, 
writing an essay on the Value of Idle- 
ness. 

"Idleness of the body," I had begun, 
"will serve you not at all. It is only 
when the mind is yielding to the drug 
of laziness as well, that your ears are 
attuned to the silent voices and you 
can speak " 

What was that? 

A sudden clatter, a beating of sud- 
den wings around my head ! 

Only a bat. I watch it as it circles 
round the old loft. The evening is be- 
ginning to fall; I see the cows being 
driven home along the road. A soft 
greyness is wrapping its fine web about 
the world and this little creature is ven- 

222 



THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 

turing forth from its hiding-place be- 
fore the day is yet quite dead. 

What a wonderful house to live in 
— this old, old mill! I scarcely won- 
der at the beauty and simplicity of the 
"Lettres de mon Moulin" as I sit here 
with the upper half of the creaking door 
wide open, and the far hills stretching 
out to sleep as the night draws round 
about them. 

But now, as the grey light grows 
deeper and twilight hangs upon a frail 
thread ere it drops into the lap of dark- 
ness ; now, as though it were a herald of 
the night to come, a wind springs up 
across the land. I hear it as its first 
whispers begin to tell their secrets in 
the corners and the crevices. Yet it 
whispers not for long. Soon, with a 
loud, insistent voice, it is crying its im- 
portunate passion to the mill. But she 
is chained. The fetters cling unmerci- 
fully to her arms. She cannot move. 
Again and again the wind envelops her 
223 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

in its embrace, but she makes no answer 
to its passion. Only now and again 
there comes her faint, despairing cry — 
the cry of a woman in pain — the cry of 
a woman in prison. I feel so sorely 
tempted to set her free, just to see her 
great generous arms sweeping in a joy- 
ous abandonment of life before the 
wind she loves so well. 

And here am I, in this old, old silent 
mill, writing an essay on the Value of 
Idleness. 

Night is on the verge now. The 
words run into one another upon the 
paper. It is so dark that my pen 
wanders from the faint ruled line and 
sets out on its own account across the 
dim grey page. 

At last comes the voice of my friend 
far below. 

"Have you finished your idleness 
yet?" 

"It's finished," say I with a sense of 
loss of the moments that have been 
224 



THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 

mine — mine and this dear, sad woman's 
in prison. I bolt the doors and come 
down. 

"Come and read it to me now," says 
he. 

And I read it all. 



"But there's nothing about idleness," 
he said. "Where's the Value of Idle- 
ness?" 

"Here," said I, and I threw the 
papers across to him. "It's all Idleness. 
To do nothing is to be receptive of 
everything. I've been doing nothing." 



225 



XXI 
THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 



XXI 

THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 

Not a few are there to applaud this 
spirit of competition, this modern en- 
deavour to do things well, not because 
they are worth doing, but from the 
desire to do them better than other 
people. 

Yet it is a canker that eats its way 
into the heart of everything. Bell- 
wattle, in her happiest mood of dis- 
tinction, would call it one of the laws 
of God. But whether it be a law of 
God or of Nature; whether, in fact, it 
be a law at all and not simply one of 
these fungoid growths of civilisation, 
it is a deceptive matter whichever way 
you look at it. 

You would imagine, whether you 
229 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

were Jesuit or not, that the end would 
justify the means in such a question 
as this. You might believe that, so long 
as the thing were done well, it would 
matter little, if at all, the motive which 
prompted its well-doing. Yet this is 
just where the subtle poison of it lurks. 
For it is not of necessity doing a thing 
well, to do it better than any one else. 
The moment you begin to work like 
this, you create a false standard, lower- 
ing the value of everything you do. It 
is not the spirit of charity to give more 
than your next door neighbour. That 
is the spirit of competition. The spirit 
of charity it is to give the last penny 
you can spare. The widow's mite is 
charity. The millionaire's thousand is 
bombast. 

But this confusion of terms — this 
confusion of motives is so growing into 
the language we speak that words, 
which once were so priceless, are be- 
come like weapons worn out and 
230 



THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 

blunted. There is but little edge left 
to any words now. They will cut noth- 
ing. 

And so this spirit of competition is 
a fetish to-day. We do not speak of 
having done a thing as well as we can 
do it, but of having done it better than 
this man or that. 

"I bet you," says the actor, "I could 
play that part better than the man who 
plays it now." 

"Do you mean to tell me," says the 
politician, "that the speech I made last 
Friday wasn't as good as Disraeli at 
his best?" 

"That last book of mine," says the 
writer, "was nearly as good as The 
Old Curiosity Shop.' I think myself 
that the death-scene was better in a 
way." 

Ah! but if we only did say these 

things aloud, instead of thinking them 

in silence. For 'tis only in silence now 

— as they would understand it in Ire- 

231 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

land — that we say what we really 
mean. 

So is it that there creeps this spirit 
of working by comparison into the soul 
and tissue of everything we do. Yet 
you would think, would you not, that 
the Church had kept herself free of it? 
But the Church is more eaten away with 
the spirit of competition than is many 
a humble labourer, driven to earn his 
living wage by making his work better 
than the rest. 

Take this story for what it is worth ; 
apply it as you will. It has only one 
meaning for me. 

In Ireland, they call the wandering 
beggars, who live an itinerant exist- 
ence, living from one town to another 
— they call them tinkers. A certain 
tinker woman, then, came into the 
city of Cork. Down one of the 
quays, seeking the scraps that fall in 
these places, dragging three wretched 
children at the frayed hem of her 
232 



THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 

skirt, she was seen by a Protes- 
tant vicar. 

Shifting one bare foot behind the 
other, she bobbed him a curtesy. 

"For the love an' honour av God, 
yeer riv'rance, give a poor 'ooman a 
copper, that the Almighty blessin's av 
God may discind on ye, yeer riv'rance. 
Oh, sure, God Almighty give ye 
grace." 

The Vicar stopped. 
"Where do you come from?" he 
asked. 

"I'm after walkin' all the ways from 
Macroon, yeer riv'rance — an' I in me 
feet." 

She held up a bare blistered foot, at 
the sight of which the Vicar shudder- 
ingly closed his eyes. 

"Where's your husband?" he in- 
quired. 

"Me husband, yeer riv'rance? Shure, 
glory be, I haven't had a sight or a 
sound av him these two years. 'Twas 
233 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

the way Ginnet's circus was in Dingar- 
vin, an' he along wid 'em clanin' the 
horses, and faith that was the last I 
saw av him, good or bad. I'm 
thinkin' he's gone foreign — he has in- 
deed." 

"Why don't you go to a priest? He's 
the person to help you — not me. I'm 
a Protestant clergyman." 

**Shure, I know that yeer riv'rance 
— an' why would I be goin' to a preyst, 
an' I wid me three little children here 
— the poor darlins — they've had divil a 
bit to eat this whole day." 

The competitive instincts of the Vicar 
cried aloud with a resonant voice in his 
ear. 

"Do you mean to say they haven't 
been brought up in the Roman Catho- 
lic Church ?" he asked quickly. 

"They have not indeed. Shure, what 
good would that be doin' them ?" 

"Haven't they been baptised at all 
into any Church ?" 

234 



THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 

"They have not." 

The Vicar felt in his pocket and pro- 
duced a sixpence. 

"Get them something to eat," said he, 
"and then come and see me. I shudder 
when I think they haven't been baptised. 
Have you?" 

"I was when I was a child," said she, 
"but I haven't been to Mass these fifteen 
years. Glory be to God, what'ud I be 
doin' at Mass when I might be gettin' 
charity from a grand gintleman like 
yeerself ?" 

"My poor woman," said the Vicar, 
"it was Christ's wish that we should 
help the poor. I'm thinking, too, of 
the hereafter of those poor little chil- 
dren of yours. What hope of salvation 
do you think there is for them if they 
have never been baptised?" 

"If 'tis as difficult in this world as 
it is to get a bite or a sup, 'tis a hard 
thing indeed. But what good would I 
be getting to baptise 'em ?" 

235 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"If you let them come to my church 
and be baptised, I'll see that you won't 
be forgotten." 

"Will yeer riv'rance give me some- 
thing the way I cud be goin' on with ?'* 

"I will, of course." 

"An' how much?" 

"I'll give you five shillings, my poor 
woman. You can get a week's lodging 
and food with that." 

"Oh — shure I'd want five shillings 
for each wan of them," she replied 
quickly. 

The Vicar paused. The tone of this 
bargaining jarred upon his ears; but 
yet, as he thought of it — three little 
souls saved — three little souls caught 
from the grasp of the Roman Church 
— three more names upon his baptismal 
register. And only fifteen shillings ! It 
was money nobly spent, honourably set 
aside for the great interest and reward 
hereafter. 

"I'll give you fifteen shillings," said 
236 



THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 

he, ''if you bring them to the church to- 
morrow morning to be baptised." 

She clasped her hands in ecstasy. 

''May the Almighty God give ye the 
blessings of his Holy Name, and may 
all the saints be wid ye in the hour of 
need. Faith, I niver met a finer Chris- 
tian or a grander gintleman in all me 
life." 

She caught her children round her 
and told them the great things that 
were in store for them. With a warm 
feeling that the day had not passed in 
vain, the Vicar hurried away. 

Directly he was out of sight, the 
woman made her way to the presbytery 
of the first Roman Catholic church she 
could find. 

"I want to see the preyst," said she, 
when they opened the door to her knock- 
ing. 

They looked at her ragged clothes. 
It was with difficulty that she gained 
an audience. 

237 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"Go round into the chapel," they said, 

"and Father will be with you in 

a minute." 

She plunged quickly into her story 
directly he came. 

"Indeed, he was a nice gintleman," 
she concluded, "and 'twas fifteen shil- 
lings he offered me if I'd bring the three 
of them to the church to-morrow morn- 
ing." 

She gazed down at them and they 
gazed up at her. In some vague way 
they realised that they were under dis- 
cussion. Their little mouths were open 
in wonder. 

" 'Tis a disgraceful thing, indeed!" 
said the priest in wrath, "to think ye'd 
go and sell the souls of yeer own chil- 
dren to one of those Protestant fellas 
who'd only be too glad the way they 
could be counting three more names in 
their Church. I'm ashamed of ye — I 
am indeed ! If I give ye twelve shillings 
now, will ye bring them here to me?" 
238 



THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 

"Oh— glory be to God, Father— 
shure that's only four shillings for each 
wan of the pore t'ings. I thought 'twas 
the way ye'd have offered me a poond 
at least to save the pore creatures the 
way they wouldn't be havin' their souls 
damned." 

" Yeer a disgraceful woman," said he, 
**to barter the souls of yeer children like 
that. I'll give ye seventeen shillings, 
and I won't give ye a penny more." 

She clasped her hands again and the 
tears rolled down her cheeks. 

"The blessing av God and av the 
Blessed Mother be wid ye," she cried. 
"Ye've saved the souls of three pore 
creatures this blessed day." 



239 



XXII 

BELLWATTLE ON THE HIGHER 
MATHEMATICS 



XXII 

BELLWATTLE ON THE HIGHER 
MATHEMATICS 

I HAVE already been at some pains in a 
few of these pages to give an idea of 
the feminine appreciation of mathe- 
matics. Undoubtedly it is more prac- 
tical than that of many an eminent 
mathematician. For let it at once be 
understood that the first function of a 
higher mathematician is to express him- 
self in terms of mathematics, just as an 
artist expresses himself in the colours 
he lays upon his canvas, or a musician 
by the little black and white dots he 
writes between and through the lines. 

"Nobody" — so a scientist once said 
to me — "nobody seems to understand 
this. They have never learnt the lan- 

243 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

guage we talk in and they fancy that we 
only fit our place in the universe so 
long as we are useful. If I were to talk 
to you now of the things I am doing in 
my laboratory, using the terms and the 
technicalities that I use there, you'd 
probably think I was endeavouring to 
be scientifically brilliant in my conver- 
sation, stringing together all the most 
exaggerated words to get an effect 
which you could not understand; 
whereas, in reality, I should be talking 
the most ordinary commonplaces which, 
even the boy who cleans out the vessels 
and the flasks can probably understand. 
Let a man invent a talking machine, or 
a calculating machine, and they call him 
a great scientist. Good heavens! If 
you knew how the real scientists and 
the real mathematicians despise him. 
Why, I've seen a mathematician ex- 
press the soul in himself so absolutely 
by the solution of an abstruse problem, 
that he has cried with joy like a child — 
244 



BELLWATTLE 

like an artist when he has finished his 
masterpiece, a writer when he has ended 
his book." 

"May I never burst into tears, if ever 
I write a book," said I. 

"Well — ^you know what I mean," said 
he. 

And I suppose I did know. Utility 
is the prostitution of most things as 
well as science and mathematics. But 
that is just where women are more 
practical mathematicians than men. I 
have never known a woman set out to 
express herself in mathematics yet. 
What is more, I pray God, most fer- 
vently, I never shall. She will employ 
the wildest means of expression in the 
world, but nothing so wild or incoher- 
ent as mathematics. 

I try to conceive a woman in a fit 
of jealousy sitting down to express her 
emotions through the medium of the 
binomial theorem — which I must tell 
you I know to be a method of expand- 

245 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

ing X and Y, bracketed to the Nth 
power, to an infinite series of powers — 
I try to conceive her doing that, but my 
conception always fails. Far more 
readily can I see her inviting to tea the 
creature who is the cause of her jeal- 
ousy, and evincing the sweetest friend- 
ship for her. Now that is expression, 
if you like, bracketed, moreover, with- 
out any necessity for your binomial 
theorem, to the Nth power, and ex- 
panded to an infinite expression of fem- 
ininity. 

To give you just the simplest ex- 
ample of this matter of the practicality 
of women in mathematics, I must tell 
you that Cruikshank and I the other 
evening were recalling our prowess at 
Euclid; setting each other problems to 
prove — well, you know the routine of 
the propositions of Euclid. 

In the midst of darning some socks 
and, having listened to us in silence for 
at least an hour, Bellwattle looked up. 
246 



BELLWATTLE 

"Was Euclid mad?" she asked, quite 
seriously. 

There was something in the nature 
of a ricochet in that question. It touched 
not only Euclid, for whom we have in- 
finite respect, but also ourselves, for 
whom we have more. 

"The sanest person that ever lived," 
said Cruikshank, shortly. 

"Then why did he waste his time in- 
venting all that rubbish? What's the 
good of it, anyhow?" 

I put away my pencil with which from 
memory I had just been drawing the 
diagram for the fourth proposition of 
the second book. 

"It develops," I answered, "the rea- 
soning power in the human animal — a 
not unworthy or wholly unnecessary 
purpose," 

She darned a few stitches in silence. 
"Has it ever done any good besides 
that?" she inquired presently. 

"Well," said Cruikshank, "it teaches 
247 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

you, for example, how, without measur- 
ing and purely by the light of reason, to 
construct an equilateral triangle on a 
given finite straight line." 

Bellwattle laid down her sock with 
the knob of wood inside it and she 
looked at both of us as though we were 
creatures from another world. 

"And what in the name of goodness," 
said she, "is an equi — whatever-you- 
call-it triangle?" 

Cruikshank went on with his ex- 
planation quite cheerily. On this prop- 
osition he was so sure of himself that 
confidence was actually glowing in his 
face. 

"Well," said he, "you know what a 
triangle is, don't you?" 

She nodded her head promisingly. 

"One of those things they sometimes 
play in bands." 

The look of confidence dropped heav- 
ily from Cruikshank's face ; but I seized 
the opportunity. She understood. At 
248 



BELLWATTLE 

least she had grasped the shape of it. 
It mattered not at all that in her mind 
its functions were to play a tune. She 
appreciated the shape of it. That served 
its end. 

"You're quite right," said I quickly. 
"They have it in an orchestra. It has 
three sides to it — hasn't it?" 

She nodded her head vivaciously. 

"Yes, and two little curly bits at the 
top where they tie the string on to hang 
it up by." 

"My God!" said Cruikshank in de- 
spair. 

But I acceded her the little curly bits. 
She had grasped the shape of a tri- 
angle. 

"Well, try and forget the curly bits," 
said I. "They have three sides — 
haven't they?" 

She acquiesced. 

"Like this," I went on hurriedly, and, 
dragging out my pencil again, I drew 
a triangle on a piece of paper. 
249 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

"That's it," said she; "but they don't 
meet at the top." 

"Some do," I replied; "the ones that 
Euclid made did." 

"Well, go on," she said, with greater 
interest. "What's an equitriangle ?" 

"An equilateral triangle," said Cruik- 
shank, now stepping in when I had done 
all the hard work for him, "is a tri- 
angle which has all its sides of equal 
length. That side," — he pointed to my 
drawing — "that side and that side all 
equal. Now Euclid'll show you," he 
continued, "how to construct an equi- 
lateral triangle on a given finite straight 
line. You needn't measure anything. 
You only want a compass to make a 
couple of circles, and he'll prove to your 
reason that all the lines of that triangle 
are one and the same length as this line 
you see on the paper now." 

He turned to me. 

"Lend me a ha'penny," said he. 

I gave him the only one I had and 
250 



BELLWATTLE 

he set to work to draw the most beauti- 
ful circles, though they had but little 
relation to A as their centre and B as 
their circumference, which were the 
letters he had written at each end of his 
given finite straight line. 

"Nevertheless, that'll do," said he. 

And then, forthwith, he began to 
prove it to her. 

I went out to get myself a cigar in 
the dining-room, and while there, cut- 
ting off the end of it and smiling gently 
to myself as I did so, I heard the voice 
of Cruikshank raised in the passion of 
despair. 

"My God! my dear child," I heard 
him say. "I proved those two were 
equal because they both came from the 
centre of this circle— B.F.G. to the cir- 
cumference. You don't remember any- 
thing." 

I lit my cigar with a trembling hand. 
Then I walked to the window of the 
dining-room and looked out into the 
251 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

garden. There were the tom-tits peck- 
ing away at the cocoa-nut shell which 
Bellwattle had hung up with such in- 
finite trouble; there were the kittens, 
lapping from a saucer of milk as Bell- 
wattle and their mother had taught 
them ; there were the sweet peas in great 
walls of colour with the old pieces of 
red flannel still clinging to the pea- 
sticks, those same pieces of flannel 
which Bellwattle had tied to keep off the 
birds when the shoots were young and 
green; there was the little robin which 
Bellwattle fed every afternoon at tea- 
time; there, in fact, were all the signs 
of Bellwattle's beautiful and wonderful 
and practical utility. 

I came back into the other room at 
the sound of Cruikshank's voice as he 
called me. 

"She sees it!" he exclaimed in an 
ecstasy. "She understands it all right. 
I made it clear, didn't I, Bellwattle?" 

"Oh, quite," said she. "I understand 
252 



BELLWATTLE 

it now right enough. But I never knew 
Eudid made instruments for bands." 

Cruikshank tore up his piece of paper 
and flung it in the grate. 

So you see, if she really knew, I've 
no doubt she'd return to question 
Euclid's sanity once more. I feel in- 
clined to question it myself, but then 
that is because I know he did not make 
instruments for bands. He only ex- 
pressed himself — that was all. 



253 



XXIII 
THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 



XXIII 

THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 

I NEVER knew how really splendid a pos- 
session was this of the vote until the 
last election. It is no wonder to me 
now that women throw dignity to the 
four winds of heaven, leaving it to 
chance and the grace of God whether 
it ever blows back to them again. It 
is no wonder to me that, for the mo- 
ment, they can forget their glorious 
heritage in order to obtain this mys- 
terious joy of recording their vote on 
a little slip of paper in the secrecy of 
the ballot-box. 

As a mystery — and all mysteries are 
power — it had never appealed to me. 
As a means of urging the laws of the 
country in such direction as one was 

257 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

pleased to consider for that country's 
good, it did once seem to me to be in- 
valuable. I know by now what a hope- 
less fallacy that is. But at that time, 
nursing a political conviction that Home 
Rule would be good for Ireland as a 
people, much as I am led to believe food 
is good to a starving man, or a sense of 
religion to a drifting woman, I listened 
to the eloquent appeal of a canvasser for 
a Unionist candidate. 

When he had finished telling me 
much more than either of us knew about 
Tariff Reform, and had built such a 
Navy before my eyes as would have 
frightened the whole German Govern- 
ment and any single English ratepayer 
out of their wits, I asked him what the 
Unionist candidate felt about Home 
Rule. 

"Home Rule?" said he, carefully — 
"You approve of Home Rule?" 

I walked gently and easily into the 
canvasser's trap. 

258 



THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 

''You don't denationalise a country," 
said I, "because you conquer it. You 
can't cut the soul out of Ireland any 
more than you can wash a nigger 
white. You can only boycott it. You 
can only paint a nigger. But boycotting 
won't starve the soul of any nation. If 
it can't get food for itself from the 
nation's stores, it will still live, feeding 
from the country-side on the wild 
herb of endurance. But there is 
that which you can do. You can boy- 
cott it." 

"And you think that Home Rule will 
encourage the development of the Irish 
people?" said he. 

I admitted that the idea had occurred 
to me. 

"Well, Mr. is quite of your way 

of thinking," he replied. 

"He would support it with his vote in 
the House?" said I. 

"Most assuredly !" he declared. 

"I shall vote for Mr. ," said I. 

259 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

And so I should, had I not gone to 
one of his meetings in the Town Hall. 
He, too, spoke eloquently about Tariff 
Reform and a Navy that would keep 
our country what it was; but in the 
midst of it, a cockney voice endeavoured 
to heckle him from the back of the hall. 

"'Ow about 'Ome Rule?" shouted 
the voice. 

The Unionist candidate had been 
heckled before. 

"How about it?" he asked sharply, 
like the crack of a pistol. 

"Are you going to let the Roman 
Catholics get the 'old in Ireland?" 

"And make them a menace to Eng- 
land, too — do you think it's likely?" re- 
plied the candidate. 

I walked away. "The vote," said I 
to myself, "the vote is only a catchpenny 
title for a popular game. It would be 
much better to gamble than vote. You 
might get something for your money 
if you backed the right man with a 
260 



THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 

shilling; but you get nothing for back- 
ing him with your vote. In future/' 
said I, "I shall bet." 

Yet only a little while afterwards I 
was to learn what a glorious thing the 
vote is. 

In my village there is an amiable 
labourer with that cast of countenance 
upon which, as on the possessions of his 
great country, the sun never sets. And 
with it all, he has that placidity of man- 
ner, that evenness of gait which sug- 
gest that he is always going to or com- 
ing from a service at his chapel. 

No one would ever dream of consult- 
ing him upon anything, though, indeed, 
I once did ask him the name of a cer- 
tain plant. 

"There be some as call it the Deadly 
shade," said he, "and some as call it the 
Nightly shade, but I don't know rightly 
which it be." 

When later on, for my own foolish 
amusement, I said I had heard it was 
261 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

called the Deadly shade, he replied in 
precisely the same fashion. I tried him 
once more, by saying that I had looked 
up a book on the subject and found it 
to be the Nightly shade. Again he re- 
plied, word for word, as before. 

At last, a few weeks later, I came to 
him and said — 

''You know we were all wrong about 
that plant. I find at South Kensington 
Museum that the proper name for it is 
the Deadly Nightshade." 

And what do you think he replied ? 

'There be some," said he, "as call it 
the Deadly shade, and some as call it 
the Nightly shade, but I don't know 
rightly which it be." 

Now that man's wife had no respect 
for him, and truly I'm not surprised. I 
found out, too, that he knew it — it would 
not, of course, be a difficult fact to ascer- 
tain — and I felt sorry for him. 

And then one day — the day before the 
polling in our village — all my pity for 
262 



THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 

him was ended. I met him on the road, 
carrying home his bag of tools. 

"Well," said I, "are you going to vote 
to-morrow?" 

His face broadened with a beaming 
smile. 

"I am that," said he. 

"Who are you going to vote for?" I 
asked. 

A cunning look crept into his little 
twinkling eyes, and he said — 

"Ah— that's telling." 

I admitted that there was that to it 
and asked him to tell me. 

He shook his head. 

"I keeps that to myself," said he. 
"We're not supposed to tell who we 
vote for. All they votes is counted 
secret." 

"Do you mean to say you don't tell 
anybody?" I asked. 

"No," he replied— "I don't tell none." 

"But you tell your wife," said I. 

He shook his head again, and his 
263 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

smile was broader and his eyes more 
cunning than ever. 

"Surely she wants to know," I ex- 
claimed. 

**Ah — she may want to know, but that 
ain't my tellin' her — is it?" 

Then I suddenly realised what a glori- 
ous weapon he possessed. A weapon 
which, when everything else — even in- 
telligence — failed, would make him 
master in his own house. 

"That must give you a splendid sense 
of importance in your own home," said 
I — "Don't they think you're a fine fel- 
low?" 

"P'raps they do." 

"And all because you've got the mys- 
tery of a vote." 

"I can't think of no other reason," 
said he. 

So whenever the question of giving 
women the vote is raised, I can think, 
too, of no other reason for their want- 
ing it. A woman will bow her head 
264 



THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 

before a mystery when all sense of wor- 
ship has left her. It is this which gives 
her so much respect for the priesthood ; 
it is this perhaps which gives her her 
desire for the vote. 



265 



XXIV 
SHIP'S LOGS 



XXIV 

ship's logs 

There is a yard by the river-side in 
London — opposite Lambeth or some- 
where thereabouts, I think it must be — 
where you may come so close in touch 
with Romance as will set your fancy 
afire and transport you thousands of 
miles away upon the far-off seas of the 
Orient. 

You may talk in disbelieving tones of 
wishing-rings, of seven-leagued boots 
and magic carpets, counting them as 
fairy tales, food only for the minds of 
children ; but they are after all only the 
poetic materialisation of those same 
subtle things in life which give wings 
to our own imagination, or bring to eyes 
tired with reality the gentle sleep of a 
day dream. 

269 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

Nearly every one must know the 
place I write of. It is where they break 
up into logs the timber of those ships 
which have had their day — the ships 
that have ridden fearless and safe 
through a thousand storms, that have 
set forth so hopefully into the dim hori- 
zon of the unknown and evaded to the 
last the grim, grasping fingers of the 
hungry sea. 

And there you will see their death 
masks, those silent figureheads which, 
for so many nights and so many days 
with untiring, ever-watchful eyes have 
faced the mystery of the deep waters 
unafraid. There is something pathetic 
— there is something majestic, too — 
about those expressionless faces. They 
seem so wooden and so foolish when 
first you look at them ; but as your fancy 
sets its wings, as your ears become at- 
tuned to the inwardness that can be 
found in all things, however ma- 
terial, you will catch the sound of 
270 



SHIP'S LOGS 

dim, faint voices that have a thousand 
tales of the sea to tell, a thousand 
yarns to spin, a thousand adventures 
to relate. 

Nothing is silent in this world. There 
is only deafness. 

It has always appealed to me as the 
most noble of human conceptions, that 
burial of the Viking lord. The gran- 
deur of it is its simplicity. There is 
a fine spectacular element in it, too, 
but never a trace of bombast. The mod- 
ern polished oak coffin with its gaudy 
brass fittings, the super-ornate hearse, 
the prancing black stallions, the butch- 
ery of a thousand graceful flowers — all 
this is bombast if you wish. It no more 
speaks of death than speaks the fat fig- 
ure of Britannia on the top of the high- 
est circus car of England. Funerals to- 
day have lost all the grandeur of sim- 
plicity. But that riding forth in a burn- 
ing ship, stretched out with folded 
hands upon the deck his feet had paced 
271 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

so oft; riding forth towards that far 
horizon which his eyes had ever scanned, 
there is a generous nobility in that form 
of burial. You can imagine no hag- 
gling with an undertaker over the fu- 
neral about this. Here was no cutting 
down of the prices, saving a little on 
the coffin here, there a little on the 
hearse. 

No — this was the Viking's own ship 
— the most priceless possession that he 
had. Can you not see it plainly, with 
sails set, speeding forth upon its last 
voyage — the last voyage for both of 
them? And then, as the lapping, leap- 
ing flames catch hold upon the bellied 
canvas, I can see her settling down in 
the swinging cradle of the waves. I can 
see the dense column of smoke mingling 
with and veiling the tongues of orange 
flame, until she becomes like a little 
Altar set out upon a vast sea, offering 
up its sacrifice of a human soul to the 
ever-implacable gods. 
272' 



SHIP'S LOGS 

Now every time you burn a ship's log 
you attend a Viking's burial. In those 
flames of green and gold, of orange, 
purple and blue, there is to be found, 
if you will use but the eyes for it, all 
the romance, all the spirit and colour of 
that majestic human sacrifice — the 
burial of a Viking lord. As you sit 
through the long evenings, while the 
rain is beating in sudden, whipping 
gusts upon the streaming window pane 
and the drops fall spitting and hissing 
down the chimney into the fire below, 
then the burning of a ship's log is com- 
pany enough for any one. With every 
spurt of flame as the tar oozes out from 
the sodden wood, and the water, still 
clinging in the tenacious timber, bubbles 
and boils, you can distinguish but 
faintly the stirring voice of Romance 
telling of thrilling enterprise and of 
great adventure. There are few sailors 
can spin a yarn so much to your liking. 
Never was there a pirate ship so fleet 

273 



THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 

or so bold; there were never escapes so 
miraculous, or battles so stern, as you 
can see when in those long-drawn even- 
ings you sit alone in the unliglited par- 
lour and watch a ship's log burning on 
the fire. 

Pay no heed to them when they tell 
you the green flames come from copper, 
"the blue from lead, the pale purple from 
potassium. The chemist's laboratory 
has its own romance, but it shares noth- 
ing in common with the high seas of 
imagination upon which you are riding 
now. Let the green flames come from 
copper! They are the emeralds, the 
treasure of the Orient to you. Let the 
blue flames come from lead, the pale 
purple from potassium! In your eyes 
as you sit there in that darkened room, 
with the flame-light flickering upon the 
ceiling and the shadows creeping near to 
listen to it all, they are the blue sash 
around the waist, the purple 'kerchief 
about the head of the bravest and the 
274 



SHIP'S LOGS 

most bloodthirsty pirate that ever 
stepped. 

At all times a fire is a companion. 
Yet set but a ship's log upon the flames 
and I warrant you will lose yourself and 
all about you; lose yourself until the 
last light flickers, the last red ember 
falls, and the good ship that has borne 
you so safely over a thousand seas sinks 
down into the grey ashes of majestic 
burial. 



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